engleski

Seawater at the nanoscale: Organic assemblies imaged by AFM

The present study introduces atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a direct imaging technique for characterization of marine biopolymer assemblies and understanding molecular mechanism of biopolymers associations in seawater, not accessible by other techniques. A nutrient enrichment experiment ("Phosphorus limited carbon fixation, cycling and persistence and role of aggregation in the processes") performed from October 2007 until February 2008 in the Northern Adriatic (Piran, Slovenia) gave us the opportunity to follow the stages in self-assembly of exopolymers produced during the diatoms dominated phytoplankton bloom. Direct deposition of whole seawater on freshly cleaved mica followed by rinsing is the procedure that causes the least impact on the original structures of biopolymer assemblies in seawater. Topographic images revealed main structural organizations spanning from single fibrils and globules to their associations and gel networks, but also vesicles and nanobubbles. Although these findings apply directly to the organic structures observable in the northern Adriatic Sea, they also form basis for advancing research on biopolymer associations in the ocean using AFM.

seawater ; nanoscale ; AFM

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