Prymnesium parvum growth characteristics – analysis of pigmentation dynamics over growth and stationary phase
Alexis M. Martinez
Advisor - Dr. Daniel Roelke, Mentor - Reagan Errera
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
Texas A&M University
Prymnesium parvum,
or golden alga, produces toxins responsible for massive fish and bivalve deaths
in brackish water bodies. In Texas, golden algae cause significant economic and
ecologic harm at an increasing rate. Due to the limited understanding of P.
parvum and the severity in which its toxins kill fish, the need for
detection and prevention of golden algae blooms is of the utmost importance.
Current methods (microscopic analysis) for detecting golden algae are
time-consuming requiring highly-skilled technicians. A more recent method for
determining phytoplankton abundance and productivity is through pigment
analysis. All algae contain pigments, which are the means in which algae carry
out photosynthesis. Representative algal families contain different pigment
combinations. The application of this assumption is used in a matrix software
program, ChemTax, which calculates the class composition of phytoplankton
based on pigment ratios. The application of this method to analyze P. parvum
abundance was explored in this experiment. If P. parvum pigment ratios
remained conservative over growth, a reference ratio could be determined, used
in ChemTax, and the rapid and accurate identification of P. parvum
could be feasible. In this study, pigmentation dynamics were analyzed to
determine if pigment ratios change with cell growth. High-performance liquid
chromatography was used to obtain pigment concentrations from triplicate P.
parvum samples over time. Pigment ratios were analyzed over 24 days
revealing a wide variation in ratios when analyzed with respect to the cell
growth and stationary phase. Based on this study of pigmentation dynamics,
pigment ratios are not conservative through the different stages of cell growth,
and cannot be applied to ChemTax analysis.
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