Katherine Heal and Anitra Ingalls have struck gold with their latest MMRC research on vitamins.  Read the news article here.  You can learn about Katherine’s general academic outlook by watching this YouTube video.

The phrase, ‘Eat your vitamins,’ applies to marine animals just like humans. Many vitamins are elusive in the ocean environment.  University of Washington researchers used new tools to measure and track B-12 vitamins in the ocean. Once believed to be manufactured only by marine bacteria, the new results show that a whole different class of organism, archaea, can supply this essential vitamin. The results were presented Feb. 24 at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu.

Rick Keil will be presenting some targeted proteomics research at the upcoming GHER Conference in Liege Belgium from 5-9 May 2014.  His co-authors are Jaqui Neibauer, Allan Devol and Ben Van Mooy.  The research was originally conducted off the west coast of Mexico in a region known as the Eastern Tropical North Pacific.  The researchers utilized a targeted proteomics approach to seek evidence of chemoautotrophic carbon in the sinking material. Suspended (McLane pump samples) and sinking (net trap samples) particles were evaluated for concentrations of proteins that are specific to the processes of aerobic respiration (heterotrophy) denitrification (heterotrophy) and anammox (chemoautotrophy). The proteins targeted are ubiquinol oxidase (prokaryotic aerobic respiration), N2O reductase (denitrification), hydrazine hydrolase & hydroxylamine oxidoreductase (anammox), and cytochrome c nitrite reductase (nrfA) (DNRA). In the spring of 2012 in the ETNP we see some evidence of denitrifying bacteria in the sinking particles, but there is virtually no signal from annamox bacteria. This suggests that chemoautotrophic biomass is not contributing substantially to the flux at this location and at this time.

The University of Washington is proud to announce the establishment of the MMRC, focusing on metabolomics research in the environmental sciences.  Located in the Ocean Sciences Building and under the direction of Professor Anitra Ingalls, the MMRC provides metabolomic analyses for researchers across the environmental disciplines.