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News Release 10-121 - Video

Infochemicals in the ocean, they're called: signals from ocean to microbes.

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Marine microbes--though invisible to the naked eye--perform functions that are vital for the health of the ocean. With no vision or hearing, they navigate their environment by following chemical signals. One of these chemicals, DMSP, elicits attraction among several marine microorganisms. The movies, taken in microfluidic channels, show the predator Oxyrrhis marina responding rapidly to a patch of DMSP, then retaining position within the patch.

Credit: Roman Stocker, Tanvir Ahmed, Rafel Simó, Justin Seymour (MIT)

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