Pathway-centric analysis of microbial metabolic potential and expression along nutrient and energy gradients in the western Atlantic Ocean

• Published in: Frontiers in Marine Science
• Main Authors: Cavaco, Maria A., Bhatia, Maya P., Hawley, Alyse K., Torres-Beltrán, Mónica, Johnson, Winifred M., Longnecker, Krista, Konwar, Kishori, Kujawinski, Elizabeth B., Hallam, Steven J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Frontiers Media 2022
• Subjects: Marine microbiology; Metagenomics; Metatranscriptomics; Metabolites; Atlantic Ocean; Biogeochemistry; Metabolic pathways; Functional redundancy; South Atlantic Ocean
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/29350

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Cavaco, M. A., Bhatia, M. P., Hawley, A. K., Torres-Beltran, M., Johnson, W. M., Longnecker, K., Konwar, K., Kujawinski, E. B., & Hallam, S. J. Pathway-centric analysis of microbial metabolic potential and expression along nutrient and energy gradients in the western Atlantic Ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9, (2022): 867310, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.867310. Microbial communities play integral roles in driving nutrient and energy transformations in the ocean, collectively contributing to fundamental biogeochemical cycles. Although it is well known that these communities are stratified within the water column, there remains limited knowledge of how metabolic pathways are distributed and expressed. Here, we investigate pathway distribution and expression patterns from surface (5 m) to deep dark ocean (4000 m) at three stations along a 2765 km transect in the western South Atlantic Ocean. This study is based on new data, consisting of 43 samples for 16S rRNA gene sequencing, 20 samples for metagenomics and 19 samples for metatranscriptomics. Consistent with previous observations, we observed vertical zonation of microbial community structure largely partitioned between light and dark ocean waters. The metabolic pathways inferred from genomic sequence information and gene expression stratified with depth. For example, expression of photosynthetic pathways increased in sunlit waters. Conversely, expression of pathways related to carbon conversion processes, particularly those involving recalcitrant and organic carbon degradation pathways (i.e., oxidation of formaldehyde) increased in dark ocean waters. We also observed correlations between indicator taxa for specific depths with the selective expression of metabolic pathways. For example, SAR202, prevalent in deep waters, was strongly correlated with expression of the methanol oxidation pathway. ...