PROTECT researcher’s work published in Science

by | Sep 16, 2014 | Media Coverage of PROTECT, PROTECT Team, Research Core D (Data Management & Modeling)

PROTECT investigator Ferdi Hellweger‘s work was recently published in the journal Science. In collaboration with his graduate student, Neil Frederick, and Erik van Sebille from the University of New South Wales, Australia, Professor Hellweger quan­ti­fied the role of neu­tral processes by sim­u­lating divi­sion, muta­tion, and death of some 100,000 indi­vidual marine bac­teria cells with full genomes in a global sur­face ocean cir­cu­la­tion model. They ran the model for up to 100,000 years and then ana­lyzed the output using advanced DNA align­ment algorithms. They found that microbes evolve faster than the ocean cir­cu­la­tion can dis­perse them, leading to substantial—and dynamic— bio­geo­graphic pat­terns in their sur­face ocean pop­u­la­tion. Furthermore, these find­ings shed light on how ocean microbes may respond to global cli­mate change. For PROTECT, Professor Hellweger supports Data Management and Modeling Core by overseeing all hydrological and water distribution modeling activities.

Read more about Professor Hellweger’s work here. The scientific abstract can be found here.

Source: news@Northeastern