ArticleThe ISME journal2013
Low temperature delays timing and enhances the cost of nitrogen fixation in the unicellular cyanobacterium Cyanothece.
Article in The ISME journal, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of Nutrient Limitation on the Synthesis of N-Rich Phytoplankton Toxins: A Meta-Analysis.Toxins · 2020Pooled it
- Enhancing biological nitrogen fixation in rice paddy ecosystems: challenges, opportunities, and sustainable strategies.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Elucidating the role of compatible solutes in growth protection and amelioration of oxidative stress in the thermophilic cyanobacterium Mastigocladus sp. TA-8 during temperature shifts.Extremophiles : life under extreme conditions · 2025Article
- Particle-associated NScience advances · 2025Article
- Integrating Stochastic and Deterministic Process in the Biogeography of NFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Electron & Biomass Dynamics ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Radiation of nitrogen-metabolizing enzymes across the tree of life tracks environmental transitions in Earth history.Geobiology · 2021Article
- Multiple global change stressor effects on phytoplankton nutrient acquisition in a future ocean.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Symbiotic unicellular cyanobacteria fix nitrogen in the Arctic Ocean.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Cyanobacterial blooms.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2018Review
- Microbial Succession and Nitrogen Cycling in Cultured Biofilms as Affected by the Inorganic Nitrogen Availability.Microbial ecology · 2017Article
- Diazotroph Diversity in the Sea Ice, Melt Ponds, and Surface Waters of the Eurasian Basin of the Central Arctic Ocean.Frontiers in microbiology · 2016Article
- Environmental Conditions Outweigh Geographical Contiguity in Determining the Similarity of nifH-Harboring Microbial Communities in Sediments of Two Disconnected Marginal Seas.Frontiers in microbiology · 2016Article
- Diel Variation in Gene Expression of the CO2-Concentrating Mechanism during a Harmful Cyanobacterial Bloom.Frontiers in microbiology · 2016Article
- Competition and facilitation between the marine nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Cyanothece and its associated bacterial community.Frontiers in microbiology · 2014Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Marine nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria are largely confined to the tropical and subtropical ocean. It has been argued that their global biogeographical distribution reflects the physiologically feasible temperature range at which they can perform nitrogen fixation. In this study we refine this line of argumentation for the globally important group of unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria, and pose the following two hypotheses: (i) nitrogen fixation is limited by nitrogenase activity at low temperature and by oxygen diffusion at high temperature, which is manifested by a shift from strong to weak temperature dependence of nitrogenase activity, and (ii) high respiration rates are required to maintain very low levels of oxygen for nitrogenase, which results in enhanced respiratory cost per molecule of fixed nitrogen at low temperature. We tested these hypotheses in laboratory experiments with the unicellular cyanobacterium Cyanothece sp. BG043511. In line with the first hypothesis, the specific growth rate increased strongly with temperature from 18 to 30 °C, but leveled off at higher temperature under nitrogen-fixing conditions. As predicted by the second hypothesis, the respiratory cost of nitrogen fixation and also the cellular C:N ratio rose sharply at temperatures below 21 °C. In addition, we found that low temperature caused a strong delay in the onset of the nocturnal nitrogenase activity, which shortened the remaining nighttime available for nitrogen fixation. Together, these results point at a lower temperature limit for unicellular nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, which offers an explanation for their (sub)tropical distribution and suggests expansion of their biogeographical range by global warming.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.