Erin McParland
Ph.D. Candidate, MBBO Graduate Program (PI: Dr. Naomi Levine)
The dynamic regulation of DMSP production by marine phytoplankton
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
10 AM
AHF 153 (Torrey Webb Room)
Abstract: Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is a labile sulfur and carbon metabolite that significantly contributes to both the cycling of marine dissolved organic carbon and the balance of Earth’s albedo. DMSP is produced by the majority of eukaryotic marine phytoplankton and by many prokaryotes, but despite decades of research, the cellular mechanism and environmental drivers of DMSP production remain unknown. My thesis confirms that the cellular mechanism of DMSP is differentiated by the cellular concentrations of DMSP in different producers, where high DMSP producers (e.g. dinoflagellates and haptophytes) constitutively produce DMSP and low DMSP producers (e.g. cyanobacteria and diatoms) actively regulate DMSP production in response to environmental stress. However, with natural community experiments and global model predictions, my thesis demonstrates that variability of in situ DMSP production is driven by the biomass of high producers. My thesis highlights the potential for predicting in situ DMSP concentrations with a high DMSP producer marker gene and demonstrates the importance of accurately capturing the sub-dominant community for prediction of DMSP, or other similar metabolites produced by a small fraction of the marine microbial community.
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