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René Mazerolle


Summer student (New Brunswick Community College, CESAB, Grand Falls): 1998

Present occupation: Biologist in consulting firm in Fredericton, Canada

Project: Phycocolloid chemistry as a taxonomic indicator of phylogeny in the Gigartinales, Rhodophyceae: A review and current developments using Fourier transform infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

Abstract: The taxonomic significance of the polysaccharide structures of algal cells has been underscored several times over the past few decades but has never been pursued systematically. Many changes in red algal systematics and the biochemical analyses of phycocolloids have occurred in the recent years. The cell-wall composition of representatives of 167 (24.7%) genera and 470 (11.5%) species of red algae has been documented. The method developed by Chopin and Whalen for carrageenan identification by Fourier transform infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is extended to the study of phycocolloids for diverse species in many red algal orders. This paper focuses on the Gigartinales in which representatives of 28 (68.3%) families, 88 (50.6%) genera and 224 (27.9%) species have been analyzed.

In light of recent molecular phylogenies, some patterns of distribution of key phycocolloid attributes, corresponding to familial and ordinal level groupings, are emerging; however, more species remain to be analyzed. The well documented biochemical alternation of generations in the Phyllophoraceae, Petrocelidaceae and Gigartinales still holds (with two exceptions), but this pattern was not recorded in other families of Gigartinales.