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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Sam Wilson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2022, The Author(s). Persistent nitrogen depletion in sunlit open ocean waters provides a favorable ecological niche for nitrogen-fixing (diazotrophic) cyanobacteria, some of which associate symbiotically with eukaryotic algae. All known marine examples of these symbioses have involved either centric diatom or haptophyte hosts. We report here the discovery and characterization of two distinct marine pennate diatom-diazotroph symbioses, which until now had only been observed in freshwater environments. Rhopalodiaceae diatoms Epithemia pelagica sp. nov. and Epithemia catenata sp. nov. were isolated repeatedly from the subtropical North Pacific Ocean, and analysis of sequence libraries reveals a global distribution. These symbioses likely escaped attention because the endosymbionts lack fluorescent photopigments, have nifH gene sequences similar to those of free-living unicellular cyanobacteria, and are lost in nitrogen-replete medium. Marine Rhopalodiaceae-diazotroph symbioses are a previously overlooked but widespread source of bioavailable nitrogen in marine habitats and provide new, easily cultured model organisms for the study of organelle evolution.
Author(s): Schvarcz CR, Wilson ST, Caffin M, Stancheva R, Li Q, Turk-Kubo KA, White AE, Karl DM, Zehr JP, Steward GF
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Communications
Year: 2022
Volume: 13
Online publication date: 10/02/2022
Acceptance date: 06/01/2022
Date deposited: 11/04/2025
ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Research
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28065-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28065-6
Data Access Statement: Sequences produced for this study have been deposited in GenBank under accession numbers MW562846–MW562894. Analyses were also conducted using data from NCBI’s non-redundant nucleotide (nt) and protein (nr) databases and the following SRA run database accessions: [see the full article for the list of database accessions]. Source data for Figs. 2–4 and Supplementary Figs. 13–17, 18e, 20, and 21 are provided with this paper.
PubMed id: 35145076
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