Editorial: Metabolic Interactions Between Bacteria and Phytoplankton

• Published in: Frontiers in microbiology Vol. 9; p. 727
• Main Author: Mayali, Xavier
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 10.04.2018; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: 16S rRNA gene; bacteria; BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; metabolites; microalgae; Microbiology; roseobacter; microalgae; bacteria; roseobacter; metabolites; 16S rRNA gene
• ISSN: 1664-302X; 1664-302X
• DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00727

Gone are the days when bacteria (and archaea) were largely ignored by oceanographers and limnologists. The study of microbes now dominates the aquatic sciences, as microbes do in activity and sometimes biomass, in most of earth's biomes (Whitman et al., 1998). Current efforts to better understand the impact of the human microbiome on our health (Cho and Blaser, 2012) underlie the major attitude change that we have had about the impact of microbial life on the rest of the world, from either unimportant or disease-causing to instrumental in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. In sunlit aquatic ecosystems (lakes, streams, estuaries, and the surface ocean), we know that bacteria processes on average 50% of the carbon fixed by photosynthesis (Azam and Malfatti, 2007), remineralizing CO2 and inorganic nutrients in the process. As such, the interactions between primary producing photoautotrophs (microalgae and cyanobacteria) and the secondary consuming and nutrient recycling heterotrophs (bacteria and archaea) are critical to understand ecosystem level processes, and it could be argued that these organisms should be studied together rather than in isolation.