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Dust- and mineral-iron utilization by the marine dinitrogen-fixer Trichodesmium

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 529–534 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Trichodesmium, a filamentous dinitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium, forms extensive blooms in nutrient-poor tropical and subtropical ocean waters. These cyano-bacteria contribute significantly to biological fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere in these waters, and thereby fuel primary production and influence nutrient flow and the cycling of organic and inorganic matter1,2. Trichodesmium blooms require large quantities of iron, which is partly supplied by the influx of wind-blown dust3. However, the processes and mechanisms associated with dust acquisition are poorly understood3,4,5,6. Here, we incubate natural populations and laboratory cultures of Trichodesmium with isotopically labelled iron oxides and desert dust, to determine how these cyanobacteria collect, process and use particulate iron. We show that, like most phytoplankton, Trichodesmium acquires only dissolved iron. However, unlike other studied phytoplankton, Trichodesmium accelerates the rate of iron dissolution from oxides and dust, through as yet unspecified cell-surface processes, and thereby increases cellular iron uptake rates. We show that natural puff (ball-shaped) colonies of Trichodesmium are particularly effective at dissolving dust and oxides, which we attribute to efficient dust trapping in their intricate colony morphology, followed by active shuttling and packaging of the dust within the colony core. We suggest that colony formation in Trichodesmium is an adaptive strategy that enhances iron acquisition from particulate sources such as dust.

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Figure 1: Iron acquisition by Trichodesmium IMS101 from 40 nM 55ferrihydrite.
Figure 2: Active enhancement of ferrihydrite and dust dissolution by Trichodesmium.
Figure 3: Micrographs of natural Trichodesmium colonies mixed with dust showing efficient dust retention and active centring of the dust in the colony core.
Figure 4: Active centring of ferrihydrite and dust by puff-shaped natural Trichodesmium colonies.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank O. Levitan and D. Spungin for help with Trichodesmium culturing, H. Lis for help with uptake experiments, and V. Farstey, M. Dray and I. Avishay for help with natural Trichodesmium collection. This work was supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation grant 933/07 and the Israel USA Binational Science Foundation grant 2008097 awarded to Y.S. and BMBF-MOST GR1950 to I.B-F. This work is in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a MSc thesis to M.R. from Bar Ilan University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel

    Maxim Rubin & Ilana Berman-Frank

  2. The Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, Eilat 88103, Israel

    Maxim Rubin & Yeala Shaked

  3. The Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel

    Yeala Shaked

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  1. Maxim Rubin
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The work presented in this paper is a joint effort of all authors. Y.S. conceived the study; Y.S., I.B-F. and M.R. planned and designed the experiments; M.R. carried out the experiments and analysed the data; all authors wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Yeala Shaked.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rubin, M., Berman-Frank, I. & Shaked, Y. Dust- and mineral-iron utilization by the marine dinitrogen-fixer Trichodesmium. Nature Geosci 4, 529–534 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1181

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