This is a podcast of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
at UC San Diego. To learn more about how you can support Scripps
visit us online at scripps.ucsd.edu.
For hundreds of years,
longtime residents and infrequent visitors alike,
have known about the mysterious slime that rises in the waters of the
Northern Adriatic Sea.
In strange episodes first documented in 1729,
the region has regularly suffered outbreaks of mucilage,
a sticky, whitish green slime that coats sea surface waters
much to the disgust of recreational swimmers. Although mucilage is not thought
to be harmful,
severe events occurred in 1989, 1997, and 2000, dampening the region's lively
tourist industry.
While scientists are not certain what's behind the phenomenon,
recent efforts are beginning to provide clues.
Farooq Azam, a distinguished professor in the marine biology research division
at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego,
and members of his laboratory have been studying the roots of mucilage events
at the microscopic scale. Azam's graduate student
Francesca Malfatti knows all too well about the slime.
She grew up in the Italian city of Trieste and has vivid childhood
memories of mucilage outbreaks.
She is now applying her training as a microbiologist
and new technological tools to study the molecular origins of mucilage,
decipher it's structure, and probe the ecological conditions that give rise to
mucilage events.
Azam and Malfatti's results could provide a new understanding of the mysterious goo
and much more. Their research could uncover new
insight into the importance of tiny microscopic worlds
and how the vital processes they underlie carry consequences across the
global oceans.
My name is Francesca Malfatti. I am a six-year graduate student in
the Azam lab.
And I come from Trieste
a city on the Adriatic coast
of Italy. Since I grew up in Trieste,
from summer to summer, there was this event in the sea happening
the mucilage.
So if you live on the coast of the Adriatic Sea,
you know it since you were born. Mucilage in the sea
looks like a gel, a mucus floating
on the surface when it reaches the surface.
It can be colored from yellow to
green to brownish. And usually it happens during the summer
And, so living
in a coastal city
we have the desire to jump in the water,
it is pretty disgusting when you are jumping in the mucus.
What causes the mucilage outbreaks has been a mystery,
but Malfatti, Azam, and their international team of colleagues from
Italy,
Slovenia, and Croatia are starting to put the pieces together.
We don't really know
the complete story yet. What we do
know and the ideas that we have
that we are testing,
part of it is due to pollution.
There is a huge river that runs into the Northern Adriatic Sea. It's called
Po river. It brings
huge marks of nitrogen and phosphorus,
mainly left over from agriculture upstream.
It creates blooms of algae,
these microscopic algae. So, you have
normally, blooms of algae
are produced in many many different places but these are persistent blooms,
especially
in the northwest side of the Northern
Adriatic Sea. Azam believes that the algae blooms produce organic matter that
bacteria cannot decopose
fast enough, leading to the globs of slime.
To gain a greater understanding of what's happening, Azam and Malfatti are using
new technologies
to study the processes at the microscopic level.
One thing that we are using is called
atomic force microscope. What it does is
that it can essentially feel
the architecture, ups and downs
of the architecture of the macromolecules that mesh together
to create this world in which microbes
live, interact, and die. So far away the atomic force microscope imaging the new
clues, we had a better understanding of the structures of
the mucilage and their relationship with the bacteria.
Beyond the technological prowess of his new instruments,
Azam believes the new insights they help provide will pave the way for a
better understanding of microbes
and their importance across the entire ocean ecosystem.
So these fancy tools, some very powerful tools that we are using
today, are becoming
more important as we begin
to realize that it is necessary for us
to gain that deeper understanding
after microscopic world in the sea.
Especially as we
now begin to pay more and more attention as a society
on the role of the ocean's life
in carbon cycle, the role of the ocean's life
in response to the ocean to global warming.
So there are these huge environmental challenges
that when it comes to the oceans role it
really boils down to the
activities of the microbes.
This has been a presentation of Scripps
Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.