Biology of Symbioses between Marine Invertebrates and Intracellular Bacteria

The object of this research is to characterize symbiotic chemoautotrophic bacteria using molecular techniques. We are concentrating on the sequencing of their 16s rRNA to establish phylogenetic relationships between symbionts from different invertebrate hosts. We have also tested the use of oligonucleotide probes to identify putative symbionts in culture and are working to use this technique to detect free living symbionts. In addition, we compare genes for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate-carboxylase and nitrogenase in a number of symbiotic systems using molecular probes of various origin.