Marine Algal Chemical Ecology 2024
A special issue of Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Chemoecology for Drug Discovery".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 6924
Special Issue Editor
Interests: oceanography; chemical oceanography; environmental microbiology; molecular tools for microbial ecology; mass spectrometry; lipidomics; lipid metabolism; marine biogeochemistry; microbial carbon cycling; ocean carbon cycle dynamics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Marine algae are fundamental to the global carbon cycle, fixing CO2 in the surface ocean, where it can be transferred up the trophic ladder, remineralized in the water column, or sequestered at depth. Marine algae are also the source of commercially important lipids and devastating phycotoxins. Their complex chemical ecology involves auxotrophic exchange with bacteria, quorum sensing of epibionts, ligand production for acquiring trace metal micronutrients, a range of chemical defense mechanisms, including phytohormones, phycotoxins, oxylipins, and copepodamides, and efficient internal cycling of metabolites to maximize resources. The ecological dynamics of marine algae have implications for the biogeochemistry of the oceans and the base of the marine food web, but studying these systems also tells us something fundamental about the chemistry of cell–cell interactions and adaptations to various physiochemical stressors.
Marine chemical ecology is broadly defined and employs molecular tools, such as omics and bioinformatics; microbiological techniques, such as flow cytometry, staining, and microscopy; and geochemical measurements, such as radiotracer experiments, elemental analysis, compound-specific isotope analysis, and NANO-SIMS. This field is being pushed forward by the thoughtful integration of these various data types, allowing us to interpret these complex ecosystems better. Furthermore, the data mining of omics datasets often reveals new hypotheses to test, and advances in mass spectrometry have allowed us to identify novel analytes.
This Special Issue invites articles exploring the chemical ecology of marine algae and the microorganisms in their phycosphere. We envision a Special Issue with articles on a diverse range of marine algal taxa and ecosystems that also features a diverse suite of analytical techniques applied inside the laboratory and/or in this field.
Dr. Bethanie R. Edwards
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- chemical ecology
- marine microbiology
- marine algae
- omics
- community dynamics
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