Loading...

 

What is it about?

The world’s oceans act as planetary lungs, absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing the oxygen we breathe. Across vast regions of the oceans this essential function is driven by marine cyanobacteria of the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus through a process called primary production. Importantly, primary production regulates how much CO2 can be removed from our atmosphere and is the catalyst for almost all marine life. Primary production is regulated by the availability of key nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Vast swathes of the world’s oceans are nutrient impoverished, and the size of these regions is changing due to climate change. Whilst the numerical dominance of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus across the world’s nutrient impoverished oceanic regions is well known, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms allowing these organisms to survive and drive primary production remain incomplete.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

We show that cyanobacteria that specifically occupy oceanic regions depleted of phosphorus e.g. the Mediterranean Sea and North Atlantic gyre, synthesize a novel phosphatase that can release inorganic phosphate from a range of organic phosphate molecules at extremely low substrate concentrations. Such a high affinity phosphatase is important because it demonstrates that there is genetic capacity within populations of these organisms that will provide resilience to long term phosphorus depletion. Given that ocean gyres are expanding due to climate change, regions where nutrient concentrations are exceedingly low, such capacity suggests these organisms will be able to maintain their core photosynthetic and food chain roles in a warming planet. Moreover, this same enzyme is present in marine eukaryotic algae and heterotrophic bacteria highlighting this trait is broadly distributed across the microbial taxonomic world.

Perspectives

DSSorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.

Oceans are the beating heart of Earth’s carbon cycle. We have a long-standing interest in obtaining a mechanistic understanding of this ocean ‘engine’ – a task critical to understanding how this ecosystem sequesters carbon dioxide. This particular work not only highlights the exquisite nature of how microbes adapt to their real-world environment but also emphasizes the unseen majority of tiny phytoplankton that underpin critical primary production and food web functions.

Dave Scanlan
University of Warwick

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: A distinct, high-affinity, alkaline phosphatase facilitates occupation of P-depleted environments by marine picocyanobacteria, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2312892121.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page