TOC: Totally Outrageous Carbon

Lab Blab #2
Total Organic Carbon may sound like a foreign concept, but it is based on filling the basic needs of microorganisms. Just as all primary, secondary and tertiary consumers need food as a source of nutrients and energy, so do microbes. As our primary producers, microbes utilize organic molecules in their processes of respiration, reproduction and growth. Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen are their primary sources of fuel. These molecules are broken up into free molecules, through the process of catalyzation. A process that releases energy with the breaking of molecular bonds, and provides these basic elements in a form usable at the cellular level. Inorganic Carbon is an end product released as atmospheric CO2, while organic Carbon is used to build cell wall structure (i.e. growth). A healthy community of microbes will have high levels of Total Organic Carbon within its population of (consuming, growing, reproducing and expiring) members. Communities under duress from disturbances of their environment, or a new colony will use more organic Carbon as an energy source, just to maintain and stay alive. There is less organic C sequestered in their cell growth and reproduction of new generations of microbes. This is reflected in a much lower index of Total Organic Carbon (TOC). Stay tuned for the ways that we measure TOC!!
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