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Microbial Nutrition01:28

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Organisms exhibit remarkable metabolic diversity, categorized based on how they acquire energy and carbon. These strategies enable survival in various ecological niches and are essential for maintaining energy flow and nutrient cycling within ecosystems.Energy and Carbon SourcesOrganisms are classified as phototrophs or chemotrophs based on energy acquisition. Phototrophs use light as their energy source, while chemotrophs rely on oxidizing chemical compounds. Further differentiation arises...
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Updated: Dec 28, 2025

Laboratory Simulation of an IronII-rich Precambrian Marine Upwelling System to Explore the Growth of Photosynthetic Bacteria
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Microbial feedbacks optimize ocean iron availability.

Jonathan Maitland Lauderdale1, Rogier Braakman2,3, Gaël Forget2

  • 1Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; jml1@mit.edu.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|February 20, 2020
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Marine microbes create organic ligands that help keep iron available in the ocean. This positive feedback loop maximizes ocean productivity by maintaining a balance of iron and other nutrients.

Keywords:
colimitationdissolved ironmacronutrientsocean productivityorganic ligands

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Area of Science:

  • Marine biogeochemistry
  • Oceanography
  • Microbial ecology

Background:

  • Iron is a critical limiting nutrient for primary production in the open ocean.
  • Dissolved iron concentrations are maintained by organic ligands produced by marine microbes.
  • Free iron is rapidly removed from seawater under aerobic conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the hypothesized positive feedback loop between iron cycling, microbial activity, and ligand abundance.
  • To explore how this feedback influences marine nutrient distributions and overall ocean productivity.
  • To understand the potential evolutionary selection for microbial ligand cycling in the ocean.

Main Methods:

  • Numerical simulations of coupled marine cycles of macronutrients and iron.
  • Modeling the dynamic microbial production and loss of iron-chelating ligands.
  • Analyzing model outputs to compare with modern nutrient distributions.

Main Results:

  • A positive feedback between iron input, microbial production, and ligand abundance was observed.
  • Model simulations reproduced observed nutrient distributions within a specific range of ligand source/sink ratios.
  • Global ocean production was maximized when driven to co-limitation by micronutrients and macronutrients.

Conclusions:

  • Microbial ligand cycling plays a crucial role in regulating iron availability and ocean productivity.
  • A "just enough" iron state, maintained by microbial cycling, may be a result of global-scale evolutionary selection.
  • The ocean's nutrient system appears optimized under conditions of co-limitation.