title: ESP preservation control; Santa Cruz municipal wharf surface water
organism: marine metagenome
description: To evaluate the effect of preservation methodology on resultant metatranscriptomic profiles, an ESP-collected and preserved sample was compared against a sample collected by traditional vacuum filtration.  Native water was collected from the Santa Cruz (California) municipal wharf with one aliquot dedicated for ESP processing and a second for collection using traditional laboratory vacuum filtration.  The material collected using the latter method was immediately flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at -80 *C until extraction.  The ESP-processed aliquot of that same sample remained on the instrument during a field test of the ESP at MBARI’s station M0 (36.83 *N, 121.90 *W) from April 6, 2009 to April 29, 2009.  Following recovery of the instrument, both ESP- and vacuum-collected samples were extracted and used for metatranscriptomic analysis.