Biogeography of photosynthetic light-harvesting genes in marine phytoplankton.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Photosynthetic light-harvesting proteins are the mechanism by which energy enters the marine ecosystem. The dominant prokaryotic photoautotrophs are the cyanobacterial genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus that are defined by two distinct light-harvesting systems, chlorophyll-bound protein complexes or phycobilin-bound protein complexes, respectively. Here, we use the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) Project as a unique and powerful tool to analyze the environmental diversity of photosynthetic light-harvesting genes in relation to available metadata including geographical location and physical and chemical environmental parameters.

Methods

All light-harvesting gene fragments and their metadata were obtained from the GOS database, aligned using ClustalX and classifie

SUBMITTER: Bibby TS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2644788 | biostudies-literature | 2009

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature