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Enigmatic persistence of dissolved organic matter in the ocean

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 2, pages 570–583 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) contains more carbon than the combined stocks of Earth’s biota. Organisms in the ocean continuously release a myriad of molecules that become food for microheterotrophs, but, for unknown reasons, a residual fraction persists as DOM for millennia. In this Perspective, we discuss and compare two concepts that could explain this persistence. The long-standing ‘intrinsic recalcitrance’ paradigm attributes DOM stability to inherent molecular properties. In the ‘emergent recalcitrance’ concept, DOM is continuously transformed by marine microheterotrophs, with recalcitrance emerging on an ecosystems level. Both concepts are consistent with observations in the modern ocean, but they imply very different responses of the DOM pool to climate-related changes. To better understand DOM persistence, we propose a new overarching research strategy — the ecology of molecules — that integrates the concepts of intrinsic and emergent recalcitrance with the ecological and environmental context.

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Fig. 1: Small-scale processes drive global patterns of dissolved organic matter.
Fig. 2: Formation and degradation of dissolved organic matter across spatial and temporal scales.
Fig. 3: Two central concepts of dissolved organic matter persistence in the ocean.
Fig. 4: Mathematical modelling approaches based on the intrinsic and emergent recalcitrance concepts.
Fig. 5: The challenge of upscaling kinetic constants at low substrate concentrations.
Fig. 6: Molecular diversification through enzymatic reactions in the ocean.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided through the PhD research training group ‘The Ecology of Molecules’ (EcoMol) supported by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture (MWK). The expression ‘ecology of molecules’ was first conceived at an international workshop funded by the Germany Research Foundation (DFG, DI 842/5-1) at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany (24–28 Nov. 2014). T.D. and B.B. were supported by DFG (CRC 51), S.T.L. by the State of Lower Saxony (MWK) and D.A.H. by US NSF (OCE-1436748 and OCE-2023500) and US NASA (80NSSC18K0437). J.-H.H., H.B.-W. and C.V. received funding from the Max Planck Society, J.-H.H. from DFG (HE 7217/1-1), and T.D. and J.-H.H. from the Cluster of Excellence initiative (EXC-2077–390741603). H.B.-W. and C.V. acknowledge helpful comments from A. Fernandez-Guerra (Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre) and the computer resources and technical support provided by the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany

    Thorsten Dittmar, Sinikka T. Lennartz & Bernd Blasius

  2. Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), Oldenburg, Germany

    Thorsten Dittmar & Bernd Blasius

  3. Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany

    Hagen Buck-Wiese, Chiara Vanni & Jan-Hendrik Hehemann

  4. MARUM, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Hagen Buck-Wiese & Jan-Hendrik Hehemann

  5. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Dennis A. Hansell

  6. Biophysics Institute, CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Chiara Santinelli

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Contributions

T.D. chaired the writing of the article. S.T.L. performed the numerical model and C.V. the bioinformatics computations. T.D. measured the ultrahigh-resolution mass spectra shown in Fig. 1. Otherwise, the authors contributed equally to all aspects of the article.

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Dittmar, T., Lennartz, S.T., Buck-Wiese, H. et al. Enigmatic persistence of dissolved organic matter in the ocean. Nat Rev Earth Environ 2, 570–583 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00183-7

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