Flow cytometry in microbiology

This chapter introduces emerging technologies for investigating the diversity and dynamics of the marine phytoplankton. The time series of images from the continuous, automated operation of the Imaging Flow Cytobot for monitoring phytoplankton has provided early warning of harmful algal blooms and identified trends in microplankton community abundance and biomass. High throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies, e.g., metabarcoding, provide improved taxonomic resolution and uncover cryptic species, but provide relative abundance based on copy number, which may not reflect actual abundance nor indicate active segments of the community. Metatranscriptomics can provide a view of functional activity within the phytoplankton community. Integrating these approaches can provide a detailed analysis of the phytoplankton response to environmental perturbations.