Any embarrassing moments? Yes. In my first year as an assistant professor I was asked to give a talk in a neighboring department. They had just moved to a new building and I was the first speaker in their new auditorium. As I started my talk, we discovered that the auditorium was so new there weren't any light switches. I couldn't turn off the lights, and my slides were invisible. All those hou...

Deformed amphibians have been observed in eutrophic habitats, and some clues point to the retinoic acids (RAs) or RA mimics. However, RAs are generally thought of as vertebrate-specific hormones, and there was no evidence that RAs exist in cyanobacteria or algae blooms. By analyzing RAs and their analogs 4-oxo-RAs in natural cyanobacteria blooms and cultures of cyanobacteria and algae, we showe...

In the open ocean, where turbidity is very low, UV radiation may be an important factor regulating interactions among planktonic microorganisms. The effect of exposure to UV radiation on grazing by a commonly isolated marine heterotrophic nanoflagellate, Paraphysomonas bandaiensis, on two strains of the cyanobacteria Synechococcus spp. was investigated. Laboratory cultures were exposed to a ran...

In the Gulf of Maine area (GoMA), as elsewhere in the ocean, the organisms of greatest numerical abundance are microbes. Viruses in GoMA are largely cyanophages and bacteriophages, including podoviruses which lack tails. There is also evidence of Mimivirus and Chlorovirus in the metagenome. Bacteria in GoMA comprise the dominant SAR11 phylotype cluster, and other abundant phylotypes such as SAR...

Poisoning of livestock by toxic cyanobacteria was first reported in the 19th century, and throughout the 20th century cyanobacteria-related poisonings of livestock and wildlife in all continents have been described. Some mass mortality events involving unrelated fauna in prehistoric times have also been attributed to cyanotoxin poisoning; if correct, this serves as a reminder that toxic cyanoba...

A controversial precept of aquatic ecology asserts that low ratios of nitrogen to phosphorus (N:P) lead to noxious and sometimes toxic blooms of Cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria dominance is a major risk to human and ecosystem health. The stoichiometric control of Cyanobacteria therefore has become central to freshwater resource management. This controversial concept is based on observed Cyanobacte...

Susan Golden did not set out to become an expert in biological clocks, the internal timepieces that keep life on Earth adjusted to a 24-hour cycle. Instead, Golden, elected in 2010 to the National Academy of Sciences, wanted to identify the genes that underpin photosynthesis. However, her focus changed in 1986 with the discovery of biological clocks in cyanobacteria (1). Because cyanobacteria a...

persist in both freshwater and marine systems. They range from organisms that form red and brown tides to cyanobacteria that turn lakes and ponds green (Figure 1) and red. The toxins (termed “cyanotoxins”) that these organisms produce are usually secondary metabolites, and are more numerically diverse than the organisms that produce them. Here we will focus on the use of molecular methods for d...

BACKGROUND Pruritic skin rashes associated with exposure to freshwater cyanobacteria are infrequently reported in the medical and scientific literature, mostly as anecdotal and case reports. Diagnostic dermatological investigations in humans are also infrequently described. We sought to conduct a pilot volunteer study to explore the potential for cyanobacteria to elicit hypersensitivity reactio...