Marine microbiology articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cell-specific respiration rates differ by more than 1,000× among prokaryoplankton genera, and the majority of respiration was found to be performed by minority members of prokaryoplankton, whereas cells of the most prevalent lineages had extremely low respiration rates.

    • Jacob H. Munson-McGee
    • , Melody R. Lindsay
    •  & Ramunas Stepanauskas

  • Article |

    Marine Proteobacteria use the β-hydroxyaspartate cycle to assimilate glycolate, which is secreted by algae on a petagram scale, providing evidence of a previously undescribed trophic interaction between autotrophic phytoplankton and heterotrophic bacterioplankton.

    • Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski
    • , Francesca Severi
    •  & Tobias J. Erb

  • Letter |

    Genome data for thirteen alphaproteobacteria-related clades expand the coverage of alphaproteobacterial diversity and suggest that mitochondria diverged from Alphaproteobacteria before the diversification of all currently known alphaproteobacterial lineages.

    • Joran Martijn
    • , Julian Vosseberg
    •  & Thijs J. G. Ettema

  • News & Views |

    Geochemical reactions in upper layers of marine sediments are coupled to those in deeper zones. It turns out that centimetre-long bacterial filaments acting as electrical cables are the metabolic link between the layers. See Article p.218

    • Gemma Reguera

  • Letter |

    It has been thought that ocean temperatures during the early Palaeoarchaean era (around 3.5 billion years ago) were 55–85 °C. But a recent study indicated that the temperatures might be no higher than 40 °C. Here, studies are reported of the oxygen isotope compositions of phosphates in sediments from the 3.2–3.5-billion-year-old Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa. The findings indicate a well-developed phosphorus cycle and evolved biological activity in an Archaean ocean with temperatures of 26–35 °C.

    • Ruth E. Blake
    • , Sae Jung Chang
    •  & Aivo Lepland

  • Letter |

    One of the roles of the human gut microbiota is to break down nutrients using bacterial enzymes that are lacking from the human genome. It is now shown that the gut microbiota of Japanese, but not American, individuals contains porphyranases, enzymes that digest sulphated polysaccharides which are present in the marine environment only. These findings indicate that diet can select for gene content of the human microbiota.

    • Jan-Hendrik Hehemann
    • , Gaëlle Correc
    •  & Gurvan Michel

  • Letter |

    UCYN–A is a recently discovered nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium with unusual metabolic features. The complete genome of this uncultivated organism is now presented, revealing a photofermentative metabolism and dependency on other organisms for essential compounds.

    • H. James Tripp
    • , Shellie R. Bench
    •  & Jonathan P. Zehr

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