BioSWOT-Med cruise : Interview with Magali Lescot

The Omics

In the BioSWOT-Med campaign, Magali Lescot is in charge of the WP5 on Genomics. She will collect samples to study the microbial community (viruses, bacteria, protists) to evaluate the patchiness of these plankton functional types and taxa and monitor the short term biogeochemical functional responses of the microbiome to the highly dynamic physical environment. 

Magali Lescot aboard the R/V L’Atalante during the BioSWOT-Med cruise

THE RESEARCH THEMES – Magali Lescot is a research engineer at CNRS (National center for scientific research – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), in the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography located in Marseille (France). Her research focuses on plankton genome evolution and their adaptation to their environment. In the BioSWOT-Med campaign she’s in charge of the Working Group on Genomics.  

Contact: Tosca Ballerini

Read the interview

Water column sequential filtration system. A peristaltic pump is passing seawater through the system. Seawater is first passed through a 142 mm filtration apparatus equipped with a 3 μm PC filter and subsequently through a 142 mm filtration apparatus equipped with a 0.2 μm PC filter.

Filtration equipment composed of a filtration ramp (left) and 47 mm filtration units (right) connected to a vacuum pump used to analyze samples collected using a vertical tow by a 20 μm mesh size plankton net from 100 m depth to the surface of the water column. The material collected in the cod end of the plankton net is diluted and separated into subsamples. Each subsample is then filtered through 10 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (47 mm in diameter) under vacuum pressure (see picture on right side). After filtration, the membranes should be left to dry, carefully folded, and placed in individual tubes and stored at -80°C.