Outreach

Student training
The KMO Observatory has supported an REU student, Jennifer Katzenberger, who as a rising senior spent 10 weeks learning molecular and physiological methods for characterizing a set of existing and new CO-oxidizing isolates. Jenny used PCR amplification for form I and form II putative coxL genes to screen isolates and to develop a sequence database for phylogenetic analyses. She also used culture-based analyses to determine uptake potentials, and to correlate molecular results (especially the presence of form II genes) with activity. An important outcome of the study is that no consistent activity could be correlated with form II coxL, which suggests that while this gene may encode a protein with some CO oxidation activity, the primary substrate is not CO. After completing her internship, Jenny returned to the University of Colorado, and is now preparing for medical school.

The KMO Observatory is supporting Carolyn Weber as a Ph.D. student, whose dissertation work focuses on: the distribution and activity of CO oxidizers along a successional transect, the structure of CO-oxidizing communities and bacterial communities as a whole, and the role of water availability (potential) as a limiting factor in CO oxidizer physiology. Carolyn has presented aspects of her work at 3 of the American Society for Microbiology’s general meetings, the International Union of Microbiological Societies meeting (San Francisco, 2005) and the C1 Gordon Conference (Magdalen College, Oxford). Carolyn is currently a Ph.D candidate in Biological Sciences at LSU.

Undergraduate training
We have developed and presented a 3-week intensive field course in microbial biology with a lab component emphasizing CO-oxidizing bacteria. This course has been designed to provide lectures in general microbial biology and ecology with a set of field and lab exercises that introduce students to basic techniques for enrichment and isolation, enumeration of a specific functional group, and application of molecular approaches to assess diversity.

The course was implemented for 10 undergraduate students from Cornell College, Iowa and a Japanese student from Fukushima University. Students successfully enumerated and enriched CO oxidizers from 3 distinct environments, obtained an isolate from one, and amplified and cloned coxL sequences from all samples. Clone inserts were initially screened with a restriction protocol that clearly demonstrated distinct communities in each environment.

The laboratory manual is available on request. The protocols can be adapted to a variety of environments and instructional needs.

K-8 outreach
University of Maine Marine Science undergraduate student, Mary Medvar, has prepared an annotated Powerpoint presentation on the geology and ecology of volcanic ecosystems for use by G6-8 students, and worked with the South Bristol Elementary School, Maine to refine the presentation. The Powerpoint file is available on request. Ph.D. student Carolyn Weber has also prepared and presented a unit on volcanoes and geology to G5-8 science students at South Bristol Elementary School. This unit included comparsions of Hawaiian geology with that of Maine and a field trip to coastal rock formations that preserve evidence of ancient magma intrusions.