Abstract
Global oceanographic monitoring initiatives originally measured abiotic essential ocean variables but are currently incorporating biological and metagenomic sampling programs. There is, however, a large knowledge gap on how to infer bacterial functions, the information sought by biogeochemists, ecologists, and modelers, from the bacterial taxonomic information (produced by bacterial marker gene surveys). Here, we provide a correlative understanding of how a bacterial marker gene (16S rRNA) can be used to infer latitudinal trends for metabolic pathways in global monitoring campaigns. From a transect spanning 7000 km in the South Pacific Ocean we infer ten metabolic pathways from 16S rRNA gene sequences and 11 corresponding metagenome samples, which relate to metabolic processes of primary productivity, temperature-regulated thermodynamic effects, coping strategies for nutrient limitation, energy metabolism, and organic matter degradation. This study demonstrates that low-cost, high-throughput bacterial marker gene data, can be used to infer shifts in the metabolic strategies at the community scale.
Highlights
Global oceanographic monitoring initiatives originally measured abiotic essential ocean variables but are currently incorporating biological and metagenomic sampling programs
The highly conserved 16S rRNA gene is commonly sequenced for prokaryotic identification and microbial community profiling; an analysis that has been employed to study many biomes around the world3,7–9. 16S rRNA gene sequencing, does not provide direct information on the metabolic capacity of the microbial communities studied; this information can be obtained from shotgun metagenomics and genome sequencing
Frontal zones, which stimulate primary productivity[19], should display a higher relative abundance of pathways associated with CO2-fixation and energy metabolism than less productive regions
Summary
Global oceanographic monitoring initiatives originally measured abiotic essential ocean variables but are currently incorporating biological and metagenomic sampling programs. ● H4: The high availability of nutrients and seasonally defined production of organic matter in the SO and in the Subtropical Frontal Zone (STF) will result in higher relative abundances of pathways associated with energy production, such as lipid and carbohydrate biosyntheses, in these ocean provinces[23,24]).
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