Basin-scale biogeography of marine phytoplankton reflects cellular-scale optimization of metabolism and physiology
Journal article, 2022

Extensive microdiversity within Prochlorococcus, the most abundant marine cyanobacterium, occurs at scales from a single droplet of seawater to ocean basins. To interpret the structuring role of variations in genetic potential, as well as metabolic and physiological acclimation, we developed a mechanistic constraint-based modeling framework that incorporates the full suite of genes, proteins, metabolic reactions, pigments, and biochemical compositions of 69 sequenced isolates spanning the Prochlorococcus pangenome. Optimizing each strain to the local, observed physical and chemical environment along an Atlantic Ocean transect, we predicted variations in strain-specific patterns of growth rate, metabolic configuration, and physiological state, defining subtle niche subspaces directly attributable to differences in their encoded metabolic potential. Predicted growth rates covaried with observed ecotype abundances, affirming their significance as a measure of fitness and inferring a nonlinear density dependence of mortality. Our study demonstrates the potential to interpret global-scale ecosystem organization in terms of cellular-scale processes.

Author

John R. Casey

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

University of Hawaii

Rene M. Boiteau

Oregon State University

Martin Engqvist

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Zoe V. Finkel

Dalhousie University

Gang Li

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Justin Liefer

Mount Allison University

Christian L. Müller

Flatiron Institute

Nathalie Muñoz

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Michael J. Follows

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Science advances

2375-2548 (eISSN)

Vol. 8 3 eabl4930

Subject Categories

Other Biological Topics

Microbiology

Bioinformatics and Systems Biology

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abl4930

PubMed

35061539

More information

Latest update

2/3/2022 1