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Forms of communication

As a 2009 WHOI Summer Student Fellow, Rose Kantor, (Carleton College) worked with adviser, marine chemist Tracy Mincer to study bacteria that communicate chemically, through a process called quorum sensing. On a research cruise Kantor helped collect bacteria from particles in seawater samples and bring them back to WHOI. Here she cultured them, sequenced a gene encoded in their DNA to learn about what types of bacteria were cultured, and used chemical assays to screen for specific chemical signals involved in this communication.  “This program has given me a feel of how research is done in oceanography, from the cruise to the lab to the Ph.D. defense,” she said.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)