Water quality monitoring based on chemometric analysis of high-resolution phytoplankton data measured with flow cytometry.

River water is an important source of Dutch drinking water. For this reason, continuous monitoring of river water quality is needed. However, comprehensive chemical analyses with high-resolution gas chromatography [GC]-mass spectrometry [MS]/liquid chromatography [LC]-MS are quite tedious and time consuming; this makes them poorly fit for routine water quality monitoring and, therefore, many pollution events are missed.

Optimizing the setup of a flow cytometric cell sorter for efficient quantitative sorting of long filamentous cyanobacteria.

Heterogeneity within natural phytoplankton communities makes it very difficult to analyze parameters at the single-cell level. Flow cytometric sorting is therefore a useful tool in aquatic sciences, as it provides material for post-sort analysis and culturing. Sorting subpopulations from natural communities, however, often requires handling morphologically diverse and complex particles with various abundances.

Adaptive divergence in pigment composition promotes phytoplankton biodiversity.

The dazzling diversity of the phytoplankton has puzzled biologists for decades. The puzzle has been enlarged rather than solved by the progressive discovery of new phototrophic microorganisms in the oceans, including picocyanobacteria, pico-eukaryotes, and bacteriochlorophyll-based and rhodopsin-based phototrophic bacteria. Physiological and genomic studies suggest that natural selection promotes niche differentiation among these phototrophic microorganisms, particularly with respect to their photosynthetic characteristics.