CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions derived in
this study are as follows:
- 1. Classical methods for
ATP analysis of soil samples may be modified for analysis of calcareous,
deep-sea sediments by removing the large excess of Ca2+ with a
strongly acidic cation exchanger and increasing the amount of Luciferase. The
half-life of the luminescence reaction of the 1-M HEPES buffer is sufficiently
long to allow recording of standard addition curves.
- 2. When taking parameters
from the literature on C/ATP and C/bacteria cell, the bacteria number derived
from the ATP concentration is similar to bacteria numbers obtained by direct
enumeration.
- 3. The two first
principal components explain 63% of the total variance when ATP concentration,
particle diameter, CaCO3, porosity, organic carbon, total nitrogen,
and C/N values are included in a principal component model.
- 4. ATP is correlated with
CaCO3 and particle size, and virtually independent of organic carbon,
total nitrogen, and C/N values.
