The marine microbiome contributes to nearly half of our planet’s net primary production. It plays a central role in the ocean’s carbon cycle through both passive and active release of metabolites into seawater, forming a pool of dissolved compounds known as the marine exometabolome.
The capacity of planktonic marine microorganisms to actively seek out and exploit microscale chemical hotspots has been widely theorized to affect ocean-basin scale biogeochemistry, but has never been examined comprehensively in situ among natural microbial communities. Here, using a field-based ...
The viral shunt is a fundamental ecosystem process which diverts the flux of organic carbon fixed through photosynthesis during algal bloom events from heterotrophic grazers to bacteria. Through the extracellular release of metabolites, lytic viral infections supply 2-10% of photosynthetically fi...