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JPR Advance Access originally published online on November 17, 2007
Journal of Plankton Research 2008 30(2):211-220; doi:10.1093/plankt/fbm091
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Differential microbial uptake of dissolved amino acids and amino sugars in surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean

Mikhail V. Zubkov1,*, Glen A. Tarran2, Isabelle Mary1 and Bernhard M. Fuchs3

1 National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK 2 Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, The Hoe, Plymouth PL1 3DH, UK 3 Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstrasse 1, D-28359 Bremen, Germany

* CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: mvz{at}noc.soton.ac.uk

Received on May 10, 2007; accepted on November 15, 2007


  Abstract

Nitrogen bioavailability is considered to limit the productivity of oceanic oligotrophic gyres, the largest biomes on Earth. In order to assess the microbial requirement for small organic nitrogen molecules in these and other waters, the microbial uptake rates of amino acids (leucine, methionine and tyrosine) and amino sugars (glucosamine and N-acetyl-glucosamine) as well as glucose were compared using a bioassay technique of radiotracer dilution. The bioassays were carried out on four mid-Atlantic meridional transects spanning a latitudinal range from 60°N to 42°S. The mean concentrations of both bioavailable N-acetyl-glucosamine and glucose in the gyres were 1 nM, four times higher than the mean leucine concentration. Despite its lower concentration, the mean turnover time of leucine in the gyres of 15 h was 90 and 9 times shorter than the turnover time of N-acetyl-glucosamine and glucose, respectively. In addition, among amino acids, leucine was taken up in the gyres at a rate of 1.5 times faster than methionine and 2.5 times faster than tyrosine. Hence, oceanic bacterioplankton as a community showed a clear preference for amino acids, particularly leucine, compared with amino sugars. The preferential uptake of amino acids to sugars challenges the concept of microbial nitrogen or carbon limitation in the open ocean.

Communicating editor: K.J. Flynn


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