Resilience of SAR11 bacteria to rapid acidification in the high-latitude open ocean.

Ubiquitous SAR11 Alphaproteobacteria numerically dominate marine planktonic communities. Because they are excruciatingly difficult to cultivate, there is comparatively little known about their physiology and metabolic responses to long- and short-term environmental changes. As surface oceans take up anthropogenic, atmospheric CO2, the consequential process of ocean acidification could affect the global biogeochemical significance of SAR11. Shipping accidents or inadvertent release of chemicals from industrial plants can have strong short-term local effects on oceanic SAR11. This study investigated the effect of 2.5-fold acidification of seawater on the metabolism of SAR11 and other heterotrophic bacterioplankton along a natural temperature gradient crossing the North Atlantic Ocean, Norwegian and Greenland Seas. Uptake rates of the amino acid leucine by SAR11 cells as well as other bacterioplankton remained similar to controls despite an instant ∼50% increase in leucine bioavailability upon acidification. This high physiological resilience to acidification even without acclimation, suggests that open ocean dominant bacterioplankton are able to cope even with sudden and therefore more likely with long-term acidification effects.

Effects of temperature and nutrient regimes on biomass and lipid production by six oleaginous microalgae in batch culture employing a two-phase cultivation strategy.

Commercial success of algal-based biofuels depends on growth characteristics and lipid metabolism of the production species. The oleaginous microalgae, Thalassiosira pseudonana, Odontella aurita, Nannochloropsis oculata, Isochrysis galbana, Chromulina ochromonoides, and Dunaliella tertiolecta, were cultivated under a matrix of two temperatures (10 and 20 °C) and two nutrient regimes (deplete and replete). For all species, a strong negative correlation between growth rate and lipid content was observed. Multiple stressors have no additive effect on lipid accumulation. Total oil content (fatty acid methyl esters, FAMEs, pg cell(-1)) was increased more by nutrient limitation than by temperature stress. In response to nutrient stress, N. oculata emerged as the most robust species with an increase in lipid accumulation of up to three to four-fold compared to the accumulation under nutrient sufficient conditions. Although stress conditions led to reduced fatty acid unsaturation in most taxa due to increased triacylglycerol (TAG) production, a high proportion of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) was maintained in O. aurita.

Early detection of protozoan grazers in algal biofuel cultures.

Future micro-algal biofuels will most likely be derived from open-pond production systems. These are by definition open to "invasion" by grazers, which could devastate micro-algal mass-cultures. There is an urgent requirement for methodologies capable of early detection and control of grazers in dense algal cultures. In this study a model system employing the marine alga Nannochloropsis oculata was challenged by grazers including ciliates, amoebae and a heterotrophic dinoflagellate. A FlowCAM flow-cytometer was used to detect all grazers investigated (size range <20->80 µm in length) in the presence of algae. Detection limits were <10 cells ml(-1) for both "large" and "small" model grazers, Euplotes vannus (80 × 45 µm) and an unidentified holotrichous ciliate (~18 × 8 µm) respectively. Furthermore, the system can distinguish the presence of ciliates in N. oculata cultures with biotechnologically relevant cell densities; i.e. >1.4 × 10(8) cells ml(-1) (>0.5 g l(-1) dry wt.).

Evaluation of the efficiency of metabolism of dinoflagellate phosphorus and carbon by a planktonic ciliate.

The trophic transfer of nutrients through the microbial food web is a key top-down control in aquatic ecosystems which is notoriously difficult to evaluate, particularly for planktonic protists. In this study, a sensitive dual-radioactive tracer technique was developed to simultaneously assess the ingestion rate, and carbon- and phosphorus-specific assimilation efficiencies, of the marine planktonic ciliate Strobilidium neptuni feeding on the autotrophic dinoflagellate Heterocapsa triquetra. Dinoflagellate prey were simultaneously 16h pulse labelled with NaH(14)CO(3) and H(3)(33)PO(4) before being fed to the ciliate, and radioactive labels were traced into ciliate biomass and the experimental medium, as well as being monitored in the prey cells. Rates measured in short-term (10min) incubations, as commonly used to estimate protist uptake of fluorescently labelled prey, were approximately 6 times higher and 3-6 times more variable than rates measured in longer 3-5h incubations. The efficiency of accumulation of prey carbon (54+/-9%) by ciliates was lower than that of prey phosphorus (68+/-3%) suggesting that the phosphorus to carbon ratio in the ciliates was 1.3 times higher than in the labelled dinoflagellate biomass. Rates of phosphorus accumulation and release were combined to reveal that ciliates consumed 3.2+/-0.6 dinoflagellates cell(-1)h(-1). The assessment of carbon tracer release by ciliates was less reliable due to (14)CO(2) exchange between the experimental media and air. The study concludes that the dual phosphorus-carbon radioactive tracer labelling of algal prey allowed the quantification of protist herbivory and nutrient remineralisation in laboratory experiments, thereby providing a potential technique for studying planktonic microbial trophic interactions in situ.