The ocean’s most abundant “loner” microbe has a sticky second life
Researchers in the Chisholm lab find Prochlorococcus can switch between drifting alone and living in attached communities, a discovery that could reshape estimates of how much carbon the ocean moves to the deep sea.
The ocean's most abundant "loner" microbe, Prochlorococcus, possesses an unexpected second life as a sticky biofilm-forming organism, according to a study led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant photosynthetic organism in the seas, accounts for approximately 10 percent of all the carbon that the land and oceans extract from the atmosphere annually.
Previously, scientists believed the microbe essentially lived and died quickly in the water's surface, playing a minimal role in the ocean's biological pump, which moves carbon into the deep ocean and stores it there. However, the MIT team's research, published in Nature Communications, reveals that Prochlorococcus can also form biofilms and be attached to surfaces, suggesting it has a more significant role in carbon sequestration than previously thought.
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