Kieft, Brandon; et al. (2021): Phytoplankton exudates and lysates support distinct microbial consortia with specialized metabolic and ecophysiological traits
Kieft, Brandon; Li, Zhou; Bryson, Samuel; Hettich, Robert L.; Pan, Chongle; Mayali, Xavier; Mueller, Ryan S. (2021): Phytoplankton exudates and lysates support distinct microbial consortia with specialized metabolic and ecophysiological traits. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118 (41). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101178118.
„Blooms of marine phytoplankton fix complex pools of dissolved organic matter (DOM) that are thought to be partitioned among hundreds of heterotrophic microbes at the base of the food web. While the relationship between microbial consumers and phytoplankton DOM is a key component of marine carbon cycling, microbial loop metabolism is largely understood from model organisms and substrates. Here, we took an untargeted approach to measure and analyze partitioning of four distinct phytoplankton-derived DOM pools among heterotrophic populations in a natural microbial community using a combination of ecogenomics, stable isotope probing (SIP), and proteomics. Each 13C-labeled exudate or lysate from a diatom or a picocyanobacterium was preferentially assimilated by different heterotrophic taxa with specialized metabolic and physiological adaptations.“