Doria Neto, Adrião DuarteWanderley, Bruno Mattos Silva2020-01-242020-01-242019-11-25WANDERLEY, Bruno Mattos Silva. flowDiv: uma nova ferramenta computacional para análise da diversidade citométrica ambiental. 2019. 90f. Tese (Doutorado em Bioinformática) - Instituto Metrópole Digital, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2019.https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/28381Flow cytometry (FCM) is an analytical technique based on the spectroscopic characterization of particulates. This technique allows the quantitative and qualitative description of a wide range of cellular systems within seconds and at relatively low costs. Such features make it a very ubiquitous tool in both industrial and academic analytical protocols. The environmental sciences have been dealing with quite obvious obstacles with regrads to the structuring of FCM protocols: the highly heterogeneous nature of environmental samples makes it difficult to adjust protocols that balance standard mathematical reasoning and the intrinsic biological meanings of the system under study. Several approaches have been devised to correct these incongruities, including those that explore the idea of cytometric diversity - the study of FCM data based on numerical ecology methods - has been quite auspicious. However, despite the availability of solutions, many technical challenges still need to be overcome. In this work, we develop and apply a new computational tool, flowDiv, specially designed for the analysis of cytometric diversity of environmental data. Here, in addition to detailing the logic behind the method and comparing it to similar computational strategies, we apply it to real problems, revealing how some important ecological factors, such as nutritional status, affect the cytometric diversity of microbial groups in natural lakes at Patagonian Argentina and northeast Brazil. Our results suggest that important environmental variables - notably chlorophyll a and total carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen - affect the cytometric diversity of bacteria in different ways. These findings are in line with current literature and reaffirm the validity of flowDiv to consistently reflect changes in the composition of bacterial communities stemmed from environmental shifts.Acesso AbertoCitometria de fluxoDiversidade citométricaflowDivdoctoralThesisCNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS