E. Virginia Armbrust

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E. Virginia Armbrust is a biological oceanographer, professor, and current director of the University of Washington School of Oceanography. [1] She is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Science, [2] an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, [3] and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. [4]

Contents

Education

Armbrust obtained a bachelor's degree in human biology at Stanford University in 1980. She then proceeded to obtain a PhD in biological oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1990. [5]

Research career

Following her doctorate, Armbrust began working as a postdoctoral researcher. She then became faculty at the University of Washington in 1996 and was elected director of the School of Oceanography in 2011. [5]

Armbrust's current research focuses on phytoplankton and their interactions with bacteria. She is an investigator of the Simons Foundation in microbial oceanography. [6]

She led a project which assembled the genome for a type of marine Euryarchaeota that could not be cultured in the lab. This involved sequencing the genomes of a mixtures of microorganisms from seawater, and assembling related sequence fragments into a complete genome for the marine Euryarchaeota specifically. [7] [8]

Selected publications

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diatom</span> Class of microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world

Diatom refers to any member of a large group comprising several genera of algae, specifically microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year, take in over 6.7 billion metric tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and constitute nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans. The shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half-mile deep on the ocean floor, and the entire Amazon basin is fertilized annually by 27 million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara, much of it from the Bodélé Depression, which was once made up of a system of fresh-water lakes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phytoplankton</span> Autotrophic members of the plankton ecosystem

Phytoplankton are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words φυτόν, meaning 'plant', and πλαγκτός, meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biological pump</span> Carbon capture process in oceans

The biological pump, also known as the marine carbon pump, is, in its simplest form, the ocean's biologically driven sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and land runoff to the ocean interior and seafloor sediments. It is the part of the oceanic carbon cycle responsible for the cycling of organic matter formed mainly by phytoplankton during photosynthesis (soft-tissue pump), as well as the cycling of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) formed into shells by certain organisms such as plankton and mollusks (carbonate pump).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euryarchaeota</span> Phylum of archaea

Euryarchaeota is a phylum of archaea. Euryarchaeota are highly diverse and include methanogens, which produce methane and are often found in intestines, halobacteria, which survive extreme concentrations of salt, and some extremely thermophilic aerobes and anaerobes, which generally live at temperatures between 41 and 122 °C. They are separated from the other archaeans based mainly on rRNA sequences and their unique DNA polymerase.

High-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) regions are regions of the ocean where the abundance of phytoplankton is low and fairly constant despite the availability of macronutrients. Phytoplankton rely on a suite of nutrients for cellular function. Macronutrients are generally available in higher quantities in surface ocean waters, and are the typical components of common garden fertilizers. Micronutrients are generally available in lower quantities and include trace metals. Macronutrients are typically available in millimolar concentrations, while micronutrients are generally available in micro- to nanomolar concentrations. In general, nitrogen tends to be a limiting ocean nutrient, but in HNLC regions it is never significantly depleted. Instead, these regions tend to be limited by low concentrations of metabolizable iron. Iron is a critical phytoplankton micronutrient necessary for enzyme catalysis and electron transport.

Photosynthetic picoplankton

Photosynthetic picoplankton or picophytoplankton is the fraction of the phytoplankton performing photosynthesis composed of cells between 0.2 and 2 µm in size (picoplankton). It is especially important in the central oligotrophic regions of the world oceans that have very low concentration of nutrients.

<i>Thalassiosira pseudonana</i> Species of single-celled organism

Thalassiosira pseudonana is a species of marine centric diatoms. It was chosen as the first eukaryotic marine phytoplankton for whole genome sequencing. T. pseudonana was selected for this study because it is a model for diatom physiology studies, belongs to a genus widely distributed throughout the world's oceans, and has a relatively small genome at 34 mega base pairs. Scientists are researching on diatom light absorption, using the marine diatom of Thalassiosira. The diatom requires a high enough concentration of CO2 in order to utilize C4 metabolism (Clement et al. 2015).

The deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM), also called the subsurface chlorophyll maximum, is the region below the surface of water with the maximum concentration of chlorophyll. The DCM generally exists at the same depth as the nutricline, the region of the ocean where the greatest change in the nutrient concentration occurs with depth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine microorganisms</span> Any life form too small for the naked human eye to see that lives in a marine environment

Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism is any microscopic living organism or virus, that is too small to see with the unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be single-celled or multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify biologically active entities such as viruses and viroids as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living.

<i>Ditylum brightwellii</i> Species of diatom

Ditylum brightwellii is a species of cosmopolitan marine centric diatoms. It is a unicellular photosynthetic autotroph that has the ability to divide rapidly and contribute to spring phytoplankton blooms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particulate organic matter</span>

Particulate organic matter (POM) is a fraction of total organic matter operationally defined as that which does not pass through a filter pore size that typically ranges in size from 0.053 to 2 millimeters.

<i>Thalassiosira</i> Genus of single-celled organisms

Thalassiosira is a genus of centric diatoms, comprising over 100 marine and freshwater species. It is a diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotes that make up a vital part of marine and freshwater ecosystems, in which they are key primary producers and essential for carbon cycling

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine primary production</span>

Marine primary production is the chemical synthesis in the ocean of organic compounds from atmospheric or dissolved carbon dioxide. It principally occurs through the process of photosynthesis, which uses light as its source of energy, but it also occurs through chemosynthesis, which uses the oxidation or reduction of inorganic chemical compounds as its source of energy. Almost all life on Earth relies directly or indirectly on primary production. The organisms responsible for primary production are called primary producers or autotrophs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine protists</span> Protists that live in saltwater or brackish water

Marine protists are defined by their habitat as protists that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Life originated as marine single-celled prokaryotes and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. Protists are the eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are mostly single-celled and microscopic. The term protist came into use historically as a term of convenience for eukaryotes that cannot be strictly classified as plants, animals or fungi. They are not a part of modern cladistics because they are paraphyletic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particulate inorganic carbon</span>

Particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) can be contrasted with dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), the other form of inorganic carbon found in the ocean. These distinctions are important in chemical oceanography. Particulate inorganic carbon is sometimes called suspended inorganic carbon. In operational terms, it is defined as the inorganic carbon in particulate form that is too large to pass through the filter used to separate dissolved inorganic carbon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Calcite Belt</span> High-calcite region of the Southern Ocean

The Great Calcite Belt (GCB) of the Southern Ocean is a region of elevated summertime upper ocean calcite concentration derived from coccolithophores, despite the region being known for its diatom predominance. The overlap of two major phytoplankton groups, coccolithophores and diatoms, in the dynamic frontal systems characteristic of this region provides an ideal setting to study environmental influences on the distribution of different species within these taxonomic groups.

Sonya Dyhrman is an earth and environmental sciences professor who studies the physiology of phytoplankton and their role within marine ecosystems. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tatiana Rynearson</span> American oceanographer

Tatiana Rynearson is an American oceanographer who is a Professor at the University of Rhode Island. Her research considers plankton diversity and abundance. Rynearson has been on several research cruises, including trips to the North Sea, Puget Sound, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic.

Linda Karen Medlin is a molecular biologist known for her work on diatoms. She is an elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Anitra Eiding Ingalls is an American biogeochemist and oceanographer. In 2017, she was named an American Geophysical Union Outstanding Reviewer.

References

  1. "The School of Oceanography, University of Washington". www.ocean.washington.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  2. "Armbrust select for State Academy of Sciences" . Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  3. "AAAS Fellow" . Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  4. "E. Virginia Armbrust". Archived from the original on 2017-03-09. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  5. 1 2 Webmaster (2011-03-11). "Virginia Armbrust Named Director of UW School of Oceanography | Ocean Leadership". Consortium for Ocean Leadership. Retrieved 2019-05-10.
  6. "Microbial Oceanography". Simons Foundation. Retrieved 2019-05-10.
  7. Bhanoo, Sindya N. (2012-02-06). "Plucking a Strand of Genetic Insight From the Sea". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-03-22.
  8. Iverson, Vaughn; Morris, Robert M.; Frazar, Christian D.; Berthiaume, Chris T.; Morales, Rhonda L.; Armbrust, E. Virginia (2012-02-03). "Untangling Genomes from Metagenomes: Revealing an Uncultured Class of Marine Euryarchaeota". Science. 335 (6068): 587–590. Bibcode:2012Sci...335..587I. doi:10.1126/science.1212665. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   22301318. S2CID   31381073.
  9. Amin, S. A.; Hmelo, L. R.; van Tol, H. M.; Durham, B. P.; Carlson, L. T.; Heal, K. R.; Morales, R. L.; Berthiaume, C. T.; Parker, M. S. (2015-06-04). "Interaction and signalling between a cosmopolitan phytoplankton and associated bacteria". Nature. 522 (7554): 98–101. Bibcode:2015Natur.522...98A. doi:10.1038/nature14488. ISSN   0028-0836. PMID   26017307. S2CID   4462055.
  10. Hennon, Gwenn M. M.; Ashworth, Justin; Groussman, Ryan D.; Berthiaume, Chris; Morales, Rhonda L.; Baliga, Nitin S.; Orellana, Mónica V.; Armbrust, E. V. (2015-08-01). "Diatom acclimation to elevated CO2 via cAMP signalling and coordinated gene expression". Nature Climate Change. 5 (8): 761–765. Bibcode:2015NatCC...5..761H. doi:10.1038/nclimate2683. ISSN   1758-678X.
  11. "Rachel Carson Lecture | AGU". www.agu.org. Retrieved 2021-05-08.