Increased biofilm formation due to high-temperature adaptation in marine Roseobacter

Ocean temperatures will increase significantly over the next 100 years due to global climate change¹. As temperatures increase beyond current ranges, it is unclear how adaptation will impact the distribution and ecological role of marine microorganisms². To address this major unknown, we imposed a stressful high-temperature regime for 500 generations on a strain from the abundant marine Roseobacter clade. High-temperature-adapted isolates significantly improved their fitness but also increased biofilm formation at the air-liquid interface. Furthermore, this altered lifestyle was coupled with genomic changes linked to biofilm formation in individual isolates, and was also dominant in evolved populations. We hypothesize that the increasing biofilm formation was driven by lower oxygen availability at elevated temperature, and we observe a relative fitness increase at lower oxygen. The response is uniquely different from that of Escherichia coli adapted to high temperature³ (only 3% of mutated genes were shared in both studies). Thus, future increased temperatures could have a direct effect on organismal physiology and an indirect effect via a decrease in ocean oxygen solubility, leading to an alteration in microbial lifestyle.