Please join us on Zoom for the Marine Biology seminar. Dr. Anitra Ingalls (University of Washington) will present 'Metabolite signatures of marine microbial communities.'
Abstract: A central function of plankton community metabolism is to transform inorganic nutrients into organic molecules. Yet, relatively little is known about the structural diversity, concentration, and cycling of many of these molecules. In this talk I will show that intracellular metabolomes reflect taxonomic differences across cultures and marine biomes of the North Pacific Ocean. These metabolomes point the way to abundant new compounds that have not yet been considered important in marine microbial communities. These cellular metabolites enter the dissolved organic matter (DOM) pool through intentional excretion and mortality. Dissolved metabolites play an unknown role in physiology and niche partitioning among the plankton. To better understand the fate of glycine betaine, an abundant component of the intracellular metabolome, we used stable isotope labeled glycine betaine in incubations and traced it through community metabolism. Transcriptomes showed who was carrying out each step in the use of glycine betaine. Homarine is the most abundant metabolite in the North Pacific Ocean and it has no annotated pathways for its biosynthesis or degradation. We are now preparing to do similar experiments with homarine. Our studies of glycine betaine and homarine serve as model systems for envisioning how the larger pool of nitrogen containing betaines present in DOM flow through microbial communities.
For more information, please see Ingalls Lab: Microbial Metabolomics Research Center.