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104 OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE NEXT DECADE 



ceptual tools as techniques are developed to incorporate tracer 

 distributions and satellite data into modeling procedures. For 

 studies of marine populations, models based on individual organ- 

 isms show promise because they allovs^ treatment of biological 

 variability at the species level. 



Molecular Biology 



Marine organisms in general have not been studied as exten- 

 sively as their terrestrial counterparts; relatively little is know^n 

 about the biota of the world ocean. Barriers to rapid advance- 

 ments in biological oceanography include the inability of con- 

 ventional technology to distinguish rapidly among marine taxa 

 and to resolve important questions related to marine community 

 structure, flow dynamics, and their interrelationships. Similarly, 

 advances in marine biology and biological oceanography are lim- 

 ited by the paucity of fundamental knowledge of the genetics, 

 molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology of marine or- 

 ganisms. 



A new suite of elegant and sophisticated technologies and in- 

 struments for molecular biology has been developed in the past 

 two decades that could greatly facilitate studies of marine organ- 

 isms. The technologies of molecular genetics are now applicable 

 to ocean science. These technologies, which allow one to ma- 

 nipulate and probe the most fundamental life processes in ways 

 that were not previously imagined, will revolutionize knowledge 

 of the processes and mechanisms that regulate population, spe- 

 cies, and community structures in ocean ecosystems. 



In general, molecular biology will aid the study of marine 

 ecosystems in two ways: it will help to determine the physiologi- 

 cal state of organisms, and it will help to identify and character- 

 ize the genetic structure of marine populations. Work in these 

 areas will help both to identify the causes of biological variability 

 in the ocean and to understand the implications of this variability 

 for the stability and ecological balance of human-impacted eco- 

 systems. For example, these techniques were used to discover 

 archaebacteria and prochlorophyte phytoplankton, to study the 

 role of marine viruses, to determine the diversity of marine bacte- 

 ria, and to study the enzyme activity of marine organisms. Re- 

 search in these areas is in its infancy, and new techniques of 

 molecular biology will undoubtedly continue to play an impor- 

 tant role in future research. 



