Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms, structuring microbial communities in oligotrophic ocean surface waters remains a major ecological endeavor. Functional redundancy and metabolic tuning are two mechanisms that have been proposed to shape microbial response to environmental forcing. However, little is known about their roles in the oligotrophic surface ocean due to less integrative characterization of community taxonomy and function. Here, we applied an integrated meta-omics-based approach, from genes to proteins, to investigate the microbial community of the oligotrophic northern Indian Ocean. Insignificant spatial variabilities of both genomic and proteomic compositions indicated a stable microbial community that was dominated by Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus, and SAR11. However, fine tuning of some metabolic functions that are mainly driven by salinity and temperature was observed. Intriguingly, a tuning divergence occurred between metabolic potential and activity in response to different environmental perturbations. Our results indicate that metabolic tuning is an important mechanism for sustaining the stability of microbial communities in oligotrophic oceans. In addition, integrated meta-omics provides a powerful tool to comprehensively understand microbial behavior and function in the ocean.
Highlights
Oligotrophic oceans, which are characterized by extremely low nutrient and chlorophyll concentrations, cover 60% of the ocean surface and contribute more than 30% of global marine primary production, thereby playing a central role in regulating biogeochemical cycling and1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Marine Life Science & Technology the global climate (Marañón et al 2003)
Functional redundancy is the coexistence of distinct species that have the same metabolic function, while metabolic tuning describes a community that is able to acclimate to environmental changes by adjusting overall metabolism
The present study investigated the microbial metabolic potential and activity across the northern Indian Ocean using an integrated meta-omic approach, aiming to facilitate a holistic understanding on how microbial metabolic function co-varies with environmental perturbation to maintain ecosystem stability in the surface ocean
Summary
Oligotrophic oceans, which are characterized by extremely low nutrient and chlorophyll concentrations, cover 60% of the ocean surface and contribute more than 30% of global marine primary production, thereby playing a central role in regulating biogeochemical cycling and1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Marine Life Science & Technology the global climate (Marañón et al 2003). Some studies have shown that the taxonomic composition of these communities does not directly lead to metabolic variation in all marine environments (Fortunato and Crump 2015; Sunagawa et al 2015), suggesting a decoupling between taxonomy and function in response to environmental perturbations (Louca et al 2018). It remains unclear how much changes in community structure would affect microbial function in oligotrophic oceans and what roles such a decoupling would play in shaping the structure and function of the community. There is a need to go beyond taxonomy and to devote more effort to integrating taxonomy, functional potential and metabolic activity to reveal the mechanisms underlying environmental structuring of microbial community in oligotrophic oceans
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