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Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation

Phytoplankton account for about a half of photosynthesis in the world, making them a key player in the ecological and biogeochemical systems. One of the key traits of phytoplankton is their growth rate because it indicates their productivity and affects their competitive capability. The saturating r...

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Autores principales: Kim, Jongsun, Armin, Gabrielle, Inomura, Keisuke
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9742995/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36518172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crmicr.2022.100167
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author Kim, Jongsun
Armin, Gabrielle
Inomura, Keisuke
author_facet Kim, Jongsun
Armin, Gabrielle
Inomura, Keisuke
author_sort Kim, Jongsun
collection PubMed
description Phytoplankton account for about a half of photosynthesis in the world, making them a key player in the ecological and biogeochemical systems. One of the key traits of phytoplankton is their growth rate because it indicates their productivity and affects their competitive capability. The saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and environmental nutrient concentration has been widely observed yet the mechanisms behind the relationship remain elusive. Here we use a mechanistic model and metadata of phytoplankton to show that the saturating relationship between growth rate and nitrate concentration can be interpreted by intracellular macromolecular allocation. At low nitrate levels, the diffusive nitrate transport linearly increases with the nitrate concentration, while the internal nitrogen requirement increases with the growth rate, leading to a non-linear increase in the growth rate with nitrate. This increased nitrogen requirement is due to the increased allocation to biosynthetic and photosynthetic molecules. The allocation to these molecules reaches a maximum at high nitrate concentration and the growth rate ceases to increase despite high nitrate availability due to carbon limitation. The produced growth rate and nitrate relationships are consistent with the data of phytoplankton across taxa. Our study provides a macromolecular interpretation of the widely observed growth-nutrient relationship and highlights that the key control of the phytoplankton growth exists within the cell.
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spelling pubmed-97429952022-12-13 Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation Kim, Jongsun Armin, Gabrielle Inomura, Keisuke Curr Res Microb Sci Research Paper Phytoplankton account for about a half of photosynthesis in the world, making them a key player in the ecological and biogeochemical systems. One of the key traits of phytoplankton is their growth rate because it indicates their productivity and affects their competitive capability. The saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and environmental nutrient concentration has been widely observed yet the mechanisms behind the relationship remain elusive. Here we use a mechanistic model and metadata of phytoplankton to show that the saturating relationship between growth rate and nitrate concentration can be interpreted by intracellular macromolecular allocation. At low nitrate levels, the diffusive nitrate transport linearly increases with the nitrate concentration, while the internal nitrogen requirement increases with the growth rate, leading to a non-linear increase in the growth rate with nitrate. This increased nitrogen requirement is due to the increased allocation to biosynthetic and photosynthetic molecules. The allocation to these molecules reaches a maximum at high nitrate concentration and the growth rate ceases to increase despite high nitrate availability due to carbon limitation. The produced growth rate and nitrate relationships are consistent with the data of phytoplankton across taxa. Our study provides a macromolecular interpretation of the widely observed growth-nutrient relationship and highlights that the key control of the phytoplankton growth exists within the cell. Elsevier 2022-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9742995/ /pubmed/36518172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crmicr.2022.100167 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Research Paper
Kim, Jongsun
Armin, Gabrielle
Inomura, Keisuke
Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title_full Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title_fullStr Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title_full_unstemmed Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title_short Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
title_sort saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation
topic Research Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9742995/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36518172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crmicr.2022.100167
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