Marine Ultrasmall Prokaryotes Likely Affect the Cycling of Carbon, Methane, Nitrogen, and Sulfur.

ABSTRACT: Recently, we uncovered the genetic components from six carbon fixation autotrophic pathways in cleaned ultrasmall size fractions from marine samples (<0.22 µm) gathered worldwide by the Tara Oceans Expedition. This first finding suggested that prokaryotic nanoorganisms, phylogenetically distantly related to the known CPR and DPANN groups, could collectively impact carbon cycling and carbon fixation across the world's ocean. To extend our mining of the functional and taxonomic microbial dark matter from the ultrasmall size fraction from the Tara Oceans Expedition, we investigated the distribution of 28 metabolic pathways associated with the cycling of carbon, methane, nitrogen, and sulfur. For all of these pathways, we report the existence not only of novel metabolic homologs in the ultrasm

SUBMITTER: Lannes R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7851587 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature