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Full-Text Articles in Microbiology
Mixing It Up In The Ocean Carbon Cycle And The Removal Of Refractory Dissolved Organic Carbon, Yuan Shen, Ronald Benner
Mixing It Up In The Ocean Carbon Cycle And The Removal Of Refractory Dissolved Organic Carbon, Yuan Shen, Ronald Benner
Faculty Publications
A large quantity of reduced carbon is sequestered in the ocean as refractory dissolved molecules that persist through several circuits of global overturning circulation. Key aspects of the cycling of refractory dissolved organic carbon (DOC) remain unknown, making it challenging to predict how this large carbon reservoir will respond to climate change. Herein we investigate mechanisms that remove refractory DOC using bioassay experiments with DOC isolated from surface, mesopelagic and deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The isolated DOC was refractory to degradation by native microbial communities, even at elevated concentrations. However, when the refractory DOC was introduced to a …
Marine Sequestration Of Carbon In Bacterial Metabolites, Oliver J. Lechtenfeld, Norbert Hertkorn, Yuan Shen, Matthias Witt, Ronald Benner
Marine Sequestration Of Carbon In Bacterial Metabolites, Oliver J. Lechtenfeld, Norbert Hertkorn, Yuan Shen, Matthias Witt, Ronald Benner
Faculty Publications
Linking microbial metabolomics and carbon sequestration in the ocean via refractory organic molecules has been hampered by the chemical complexity of dissolved organic matter (DOM). Here, using bioassay experiments and ultra-high resolution metabolic profiling, we demonstrate that marine bacteria rapidly utilize simple organic molecules and produce exometabolites of remarkable molecular and structural diversity. Bacterial DOM is similar in chemical composition and structural complexity to naturally occurring DOM in sea water. An appreciable fraction of bacterial DOM has molecular and structural properties that are consistent with those of refractory molecules in the ocean, indicating a dominant role for bacteria in shaping …