Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID NH_2023_Miller

Revealing the Dark Cyanotoxin Biosphere

Institute: New Hampshire
Year Established: 2023 Start Date: 2023-09-01 End Date: 2024-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $29,494 Total Non-Federal Funds: $30,859

Principal Investigators: Jeffrey Miller

Project Summary: Seasonal harmful cyanobacteria blooms (HCBs) in public waterways leads to high concentrations of biotoxins that are dangerous to the health of humans and wildlife. Furthermore, studies have started to connect chronic exposure of biotoxins produced by cyanobacteria to neurodegenerative diseases. Safeguarding the public from exposure to HCBs requires a set of tools that can monitor and predict when and where HCBs will occur, and which cyanobacteria species are responsible for biotoxin production. However, due to their size, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the role of the smallest members of cyanobacteria, picocyanobacteria. We will use cell-sorting to isolate picocyanobacteria, sequence their genomes, and correlate the presence of these genomes in water samples with concentrations of biotoxins in New Hampshire Lakes. With the genomes of biotoxin-producing picocyanobacteria, we can evaluate the utility of recent molecular tools for monitoring HABs in waterways (such as qPCR) and start to determine whether biotoxins may play a role in the development of neurodegenerative diseases.