Abstract
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is the main substrate and energy source for heterotrophic bacterioplankton. To understand the interactions between DOM and the bacterial community (BC), it is important to identify the key factors on both sides in detail, chemically distinct moieties in DOM and the various bacterial taxa. Next-generation sequencing facilitates the classification of millions of reads of environmental DNA and RNA amplicons and ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry yields up to 10 000 DOM molecular formulae in a marine water sample. Linking this detailed biological and chemical information is a crucial first step toward a mechanistic understanding of the role of microorganisms in the marine carbon cycle. In this study, we interpreted the complex microbiological and molecular information via a novel combination of multivariate statistics. We were able to reveal distinct relationships between the key factors of organic matter cycling along a latitudinal transect across the North Sea. Total BC and DOM composition were mainly driven by mixing of distinct water masses and presumably retain their respective terrigenous imprint on similar timescales on their way through the North Sea. The active microbial community, however, was rather influenced by local events and correlated with specific DOM molecular formulae indicative of compounds that are easily degradable. These trends were most pronounced on the highest resolved level, that is, operationally defined ‘species’, reflecting the functional diversity of microorganisms at high taxonomic resolution.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the captain, crew and scientific party of HE361 for making this cruise a success. We are grateful to Katrin Klaproth for assistance with processing FT-ICR-MS data and to Matthias Friebe for DOC and TDN analysis. Funding was provided by the University of Oldenburg (Germany) and DFG (Collaborative Research Centre TRR 51). Cruise oceanographic data (http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.785574) and DOM molecular composition (http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.848886) are available at PANGAEA. Sequence data were deposited in the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under the accession number SRA082674.
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Osterholz, H., Singer, G., Wemheuer, B. et al. Deciphering associations between dissolved organic molecules and bacterial communities in a pelagic marine system. ISME J 10, 1717–1730 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.231
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.231
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