Perspectives on Chemical Oceanography in the 21st century: Participants of the COME ABOARD Meeting examine aspects of the field in the context of 40 years of DISCO

Fassbender, Andrea J.; Palevsky, Hilary I.; Martz, Todd R.; Ingalls, Anitra E.; Gledhill, Martha; Fawcett, Sarah E.; Brandes, Jay; Aluwihare, Lihini I.

doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2017.09.002

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…Beyond this, they can maintain phytoplankton-bacterial interactions (6,7), serve as micronutrients (8)(9)(10), manage redox stress (11), fuel nitrogen fixation (12), act as chemical defenses (13,14), and more. The comprehensive analysis of the metabolites in a system (metabolomics) is a nascent field and analytically challenging in environmental settings (15)(16)(17). Metabolomic studies are being used to investigate physiological changes in marine organisms under laboratory conditions (4,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22), though the same techniques have only recently been applied to whole communities in natural environments (22).…”

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confidence: 99%

Marine Community Metabolomes Carry Fingerprints of Phytoplankton Community Composition

et al. 2021

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Phytoplankton transform inorganic carbon into thousands of biomolecules that represent an important pool of fixed carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in the surface ocean. Metabolite production differs between phytoplankton, and the flux of these molecules through the microbial food web depends on compound-specific bioavailability to members of a wider microbial community. Yet relatively little is known about the diversity or concentration of metabolites within marine plankton. Here, we compare 313 polar metabolites in 21 cultured phytoplankton species and in natural planktonic communities across environmental gradients to show that bulk community metabolomes reflect the chemical composition of the phytoplankton community. We also show that groups of compounds have similar patterns across space and taxonomy, suggesting that the concentrations of these compounds in the environment are controlled by similar sources and sinks. We quantify several compounds in the surface ocean that represent substantial understudied pools of labile carbon. For example, the N-containing metabolite homarine was up to 3% of particulate carbon and is produced in high concentrations by cultured Synechococcus, and S-containing gonyol accumulated up to 2.5 nM in surface particles and likely originates from dinoflagellates or haptophytes. Our results show that phytoplankton composition directly shapes the carbon composition of the surface ocean. Our findings suggest that in order to access these pools of bioavailable carbon, the wider microbial community must be adapted to phytoplankton community composition. IMPORTANCE Microscopic phytoplankton transform 100 million tons of inorganic carbon into thousands of different organic compounds each day. The structure of each chemical is critical to its biological and ecosystem function, yet the diversity of biomolecules produced by marine microbial communities remained mainly unexplored, especially small polar molecules which are often considered the currency of the microbial loop. Here, we explore the abundance and diversity of small biomolecules in planktonic communities across ecological gradients in the North Pacific and within 21 cultured phytoplankton species. Our work demonstrates that phytoplankton diversity is an important determinant of the chemical composition of the highly bioavailable pool of organic carbon in the ocean, and we highlight understudied yet abundant compounds in both the environment and cultured organisms. These findings add to understanding of how the chemical makeup of phytoplankton shapes marine microbial communities where the ability to sense and use biomolecules depends on the chemical structure.

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confidence: 99%

Marine Community Metabolomes Carry Fingerprints of Phytoplankton Community Composition

et al. 2021

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“…This exercise is analogous to the assessment of analytical techniques used in chemical oceanography described by Fassbender et al. (2017). Our assessment is similarly conducted in two dimensions.…”

Section: Synthesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We now assess the overall readiness of each TEI system to reconstruct productivity, summarized in Table 2. This exercise is analogous to the assessment of analytical techniques used in chemical oceanography described by Fassbender et al (2017). Our assessment is similarly conducted in two dimensions.…”

Section: The System Is Open Marinementioning

confidence: 99%

Bioactive Trace Metals and Their Isotopes as Paleoproductivity Proxies: An Assessment Using GEOTRACES‐Era Data

Horner

Little

Conway

et al. 2021

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

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1. What is the modern marine distribution of this TEI system? 104 2. Which biological, chemical, and physical processes are most important for maintaining this 105 distribution? 106 3. In what form is this TEI system incorporated into sediments? 107 4. Are there clear priorities for improving the utility of this system to track paleoproductivity? 108 This structure results in some repetition of the main distributions, drivers, and sedimentary archives 109 between individual TEI systems. This redundancy is deliberate: each section can be read independently 110 without reference to other TEIs. We close our review by assessing the 'maturity' of each system based on 111 a comparison to more established productivity proxies, offer suggestions for future studies, and discuss 112 prospects for paleoproductivity reconstructions using bioactive TEI isotope systems.

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“…Beyond this, they can maintain phytoplankton-bacterial interactions (6,7), serve as micronutrients (8,9,10), manage redox stress (11), fuel nitrogen fixation (12), act as chemical defenses (13,14), and more. The comprehensive analysis of the metabolites in a system (metabolomics) is a nascent field and analytically challenging in environmental settings (15,16,17). Metabolomic studies are being used to investigate physiological changes in marine organisms under laboratory conditions (4,18,19,20,21), though the same techniques have not been widely applied to whole communities in natural environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine community metabolomes carry fingerprints of phytoplankton community composition

Durham

Boysen

Carlson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Phytoplankton transform inorganic carbon into thousands of biomolecules that represent an important pool of fixed carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in the surface ocean. Metabolite production differs between phytoplankton, and the flux of these molecules through the microbial food web depends on compound-specific bioavailability to members of a wider microbial community. Yet relatively little is known about the diversity or concentration of metabolites within marine plankton. Here we compare 313 polar metabolites in 21 cultured phytoplankton species and in natural planktonic communities across environmental gradients to show that bulk community metabolomes reflect chemical composition of the phytoplankton community. We also show that groups of compounds have similar patterns across space and taxonomy suggesting that the concentrations of these compounds in the environment are controlled by similar sources and sinks. We quantify several compounds in the surface ocean that represent substantial understudied pools of labile carbon. For example, the N-containing metabolite homarine was up to 3% of particulate carbon and is produced in high concentrations by cultured Synechococcus, and S-containing gonyol accumulated up to 2.5 nM in surface particles and likely originates from dinoflagellates. Our results show that phytoplankton composition directly shapes the carbon composition of the surface ocean. Our findings suggest that in order to access these pools of bioavailable carbon, the wider microbial community must be adapted to phytoplankton community composition.IMPORTANCEMicroscopic phytoplankton transform 100 million tons of inorganic carbon into thousands of different organic compounds each day. The structure of each chemical is critical to its biological and ecosystem function, yet, the diversity of biomolecules produced by marine microbial communities remained mainly unexplored, especially small polar molecules which are often considered the currency of the microbial loop. Here we explore the abundance and diversity of small biomolecules in planktonic communities across ecological gradients in the North Pacific and within 21 cultured phytoplankton species. Our work demonstrates that phytoplankton diversity is an important determinant of the chemical composition of the highly bioavailable pool of organic carbon in the ocean, and we highlight understudied yet abundant compounds in both the environment and cultured organisms. These findings add to understanding of how the chemical makeup of phytoplankton shapes marine microbial communities where the ability to sense and use biomolecules depends on the chemical structure.

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Perspectives on Chemical Oceanography in the 21st century: Participants of the COME ABOARD Meeting examine aspects of the field in the context of 40 years of DISCO

Cited by 7 publications

References 55 publications

Marine Community Metabolomes Carry Fingerprints of Phytoplankton Community Composition

Marine Community Metabolomes Carry Fingerprints of Phytoplankton Community Composition

Bioactive Trace Metals and Their Isotopes as Paleoproductivity Proxies: An Assessment Using GEOTRACES‐Era Data

Marine community metabolomes carry fingerprints of phytoplankton community composition

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