Image: Ms Qian Liu, a student in the Hollibaugh lab, successfully defended her dissertation “Biogeochemical cycling of polyamines in a coastal marine environment” on April 6, 2016. Ms Liu began her studies in the Marine Sciences program at UGA in 2010 after receiving her MSc degree from from Central Michigan University. Ms Liu is a native of Qingdao, China and received her BSc degree from Shandong University of Technology in 2005. Ms Liu’s dissertation explored the distribution and fate of polyamines, which are aliphatic organic compounds containing multiple primary amine groups, in the South Atlantic Bight. Her field work was done in collaboration with Dr. Xiozhen Mou, a former Marine Sciences student who is now a faculty member at Kent State University in Ohio. Ms Liu’s work took her to sea on 6 different cruises across the South Atlantic Bight, as well as spending over 3 weeks at the UGA Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, GA collecting samples and conducting experiments. Her work strongly suggested that phytoplankton are a major source of polyamines in coastal waters, so Ms Liu also performed experiments with cultures to evaluate the environmental factors controlling the composition and concentration of polyamines in phytoplankton cells. Two of the chapters of her dissertation have been published in the peer-reviewed literature and a third is being prepared for submission this summer. In addition to these publications, Ms Liu contributed to other work being done in the Hollibaugh Lab and is a coauthor on the publications from these studies. Liu, Q., X. Lu, B.B. Tolar, X.Mou and J.T. Hollibaugh. 2015. Concentrations, turnover rates and fluxes of polyamines in coastal waters of the South Atlantic Bight. Biogeochemistry.122: 1-16 doi:10.1007/s10533-014-0056-1 Liu, Q., N. Nishibori, I. Imai and J.T. Hollibaugh. 2016. Polyamines of marine phytoplankton and the response of polyamine pools to environmental stress and nutrient limitation. Marine Ecology Progress Series 544: 93-105 Liu, Q., B. B. Tolar, M. J. Ross, J. B. Cheek, C. M. Sweeney, N. J. Wallsgrove, B. N. Popp and J. T. Hollibaugh. Seasonal distribution and activity of ammonia-oxidizing Archaea in the South Atlantic Bight. In preparation
