Abstract
Picocyanobacteria represented by Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus have an important role in oceanic carbon fixation and nutrient cycling. In this study, we compared the community composition of picocyanobacteria from diverse marine ecosystems ranging from estuary to open oceans, tropical to polar oceans and surface to deep water, based on the sequences of 16S-23S rRNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS). A total of 1339 ITS sequences recovered from 20 samples unveiled diverse and several previously unknown clades of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. Six high-light (HL)-adapted Prochlorococcus clades were identified, among which clade HLVI had not been described previously. Prochlorococcus clades HLIII, HLIV and HLV, detected in the Equatorial Pacific samples, could be related to the HNLC clades recently found in the high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC), iron-depleted tropical oceans. At least four novel Synechococcus clades (out of six clades in total) in subcluster 5.3 were found in subtropical open oceans and the South China Sea. A niche partitioning with depth was observed in the Synechococcus subcluster 5.3. Members of Synechococcus subcluster 5.2 were dominant in the high-latitude waters (northern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea), suggesting a possible cold-adaptation of some marine Synechococcus in this subcluster. A distinct shift of the picocyanobacterial community was observed from the Bering Sea to the Chukchi Sea, which reflected the change of water temperature. Our study demonstrates that oceanic systems contain a large pool of diverse picocyanobacteria, and further suggest that new genotypes or ecotypes of picocyanobacteria will continue to emerge, as microbial consortia are explored with advanced sequencing technology.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Janet Rowe and Audrey Matteson for assistance in sample collection. We also thank Nyree West for exchanging information. This project was in part supported by the Xiamen University 111 program (to FC), the MOST project 2007CB815904, NSFC projects 41076063 and 40821063 and SOA project 201105021 (to NZJ), NSF Grants OCE0851113, OCE-0452409 and OCE-0825405 (to SWW) and Grant ARC-0732667 as part of the Arctic Natural Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation (to HRH).
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Huang, S., Wilhelm, S., Harvey, H. et al. Novel lineages of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus in the global oceans. ISME J 6, 285–297 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.106
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.106
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