Contact Info:

James Fulton
Fye 107E, Mail Stop 4
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
266 Woods Hole Road
Woods Hole, MA 02543

Shipboard Research

My most recent cruise was aboard the R/V Knorr.  We left from Woods Hole, so we were able to load all of our sampling gear at the WHOI dock and set up the shipboard organic geochemistry lab. We set out in a thick fog on April 21, 2012 and over the next 13 days made our way to Bermuda, collecting particulate and water samples and setting up experiments to study biogeochemical nutrient cycling, carbon fluxes, virus infection, lipidomics and lipid metabolism.  I conducted a series of 12-hour incubation experiments to measure degradation rates of intact polar lipid biomarkers.  These experiments are useful for better understanding the recalcitrance of lipid signalling compounds and determining which lipids are likely to contribute diagenetic products to marine sediments. (Photo: Deirdre Fulton)

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These pictures are from a 2011 research cruise on the Atlantic Explorer based at Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.  I collected samples for detecting distinctive lipids from Emiliania huxleyi when infected by viruses.  The filter on the filter rig above is from a sediment trap.  I am picking living zooplankton off the filter for separate analysis. (Photos: Kim Popendorf)

Terrestrial Biomarkers

I also work with biomarkers of terrestrial cyanobacteria, with particular interest in mat- and crust-forming species that may have colonized the early earth.  Scytonemin is a UV-absorbing compound produced by cyanobacteria to protect against damaging radiation, especially when dessicated.  It is common in desert microbiotic soil crusts, coastal mats, and microbial crusts on sunlit rock surfaces.  At the 2009 International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry in Germany, I found an excellent "field site" for scytonemin at the entrance to the Bremen Town Hall.

Scytonemin