Sallie W. (Penny) Chisholm is a biological oceanographer. She attended Skidmore College and received her Ph. Skidmore College is a private liberal arts college located in Saratoga Springs, New York, United States D. from the SUNY Albany in 1974. The University at Albany State University of New York, commonly known as the University at Albany is a Public university located in the capital of New Since 1976 she has been a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is the McAfee Professor of Engineering.
Chisholm's research has focused on the ecology of marine phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are the Autotrophic component of the Plankton community Her early work focused on the processes by which such plankton take up nutrients and the manner in which this affects their life cycle on diurnal time scales. This led her to begin using flow cytometry which can be used to measure the properties of individual cells. Flow cytometry is a technique for counting examining and sorting microscopic particles suspended in a stream of fluid
The application of flow cytometry to environmental samples led Chisholm and her collaborators (most notably R. J. Olson and H. M. Sosik) to the discovery that small plankton (in particular Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus) accounted for a much more substantial part of marine productivity than had previously been realized. Prochlorococcus is a Genus of very small (06 µm) marine Cyanobacteria with an unusual pigmentation ( Chlorophyll Synechococcus is a unicellular Cyanobacterium that is very widespread in the marine environment. Previously, biological oceanographers had focused on silicaceous diatoms as being the most important phytoplankton, accounting for 10-20 gigatons of carbon uptake each year. Chisholm's work showed that an even larger amount of carbon was cycled through these small algae, which may also play an important role in the global nitrogen cycle.
Chisholm has been a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences since 2003. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS is a corporation in the United States whose members serve Pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science In recent years, she has played a visible role in opposing the use of iron fertilization as a technological fix for anthropogenic climate change. Iron fertilization is the intentional introduction of Iron, an essential Nutrient, to the upper Ocean to stimulate the marine Food chain
References
- Chisholm, S. W. , P. G. Falkowski, and J. J. Cullen. Dis-Crediting Ocean Fertilization. Science 294:309-310, 2001.
- Chisholm, S. W. , R. J. Olson, E. R. Zettler, R. Goericke, J. Waterbury, and N. Welschmeyer. A novel free-living prochlorophyte abundant in the oceanic euphotic zone. Nature, 334(6180):340-343, 1988.
- Olson, R. J. , D. Vaulot and S. W. Chisholm. Marine phytoplankton distributions measured using shipboard flow cytometry. Deep-Sea Res. , 10:1273-1280, 1985.
- Olson, R. J. , S. L. Frankel, S. W. Chisholm and H. M. Shapiro. An inexpensive flow cytometer for the analysis of fluorescence signals in phytoplankton: Chlorophyll and DNA distributions. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. , 68:129-144, 1983.
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External links
Prochlorococcus is a Genus of very small (06 µm) marine Cyanobacteria with an unusual pigmentation ( Chlorophyll Synechococcus is a unicellular Cyanobacterium that is very widespread in the marine environment.Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic