ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Marine fish may be biochemically constrained from inhabiting the deepest ocean depths.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 277 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Trimethylamine-N-oxide: the microbial cue in immune-mediated disorders.Trends in endocrinology and metabolism: TEM · 2026Review
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- Intrapopulation Metabolic Variation Reflects Growth Differences: A Cross-Sectional Study on Gammarides.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Factors Influencing Undesirable Sensory Properties in Protein Hydrolysates and Remediation Strategies for Food Applications.Journal of food science · 2026Review
- Calorimetric characterization of the stability and activity of trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) demethylase from Methylocella silvestris BL2.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2025Article
- Hadal Snailfishes (Teleostei: Liparidae) Extend Across Multiple Trenches: Molecular Insights and Implications for Taxonomic Nomenclature.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Temperature and Pressure Shaped the Evolution of Antifreeze Proteins in Polar and Deep Sea Zoarcoid Fishes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Disentangling dispersion from mean reveals true heterogeneity-diversity relationships.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Osmoregulation by the gastro-intestinal tract of marine fish at depth - implications for the global carbon cycle.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Unique Structural Features Relate to Evolutionary Adaptation of Cytochrome P450 in the Abyssal Zone.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Screening and Isolation of Bacterial Strains Able to Degrade Trimethylamine.Microorganisms · 2025Article
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- Effects of choline metabolite-trimethylamine N-oxide on immunometabolism in inflammatory bowel disease.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Thermodynamic Origin of the Linear Pressure Dependence of DNA Thermal Stability.The journal of physical chemistry letters · 2024Article
- Insights into aging mechanisms from comparative genomics in orange and silver roughies.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Homeocurvature adaptation of phospholipids to pressure in deep-sea invertebrates.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Trimethylamine-N-oxide depletes urea in a peptide solvation shell.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
No fish have been found in the deepest 25% of the ocean (8,400-11,000 m). This apparent absence has been attributed to hydrostatic pressure, although direct evidence is wanting because of the lack of deepest-living species to study. The common osmolyte trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) stabilizes proteins against pressure and increases with depth, going from 40 to 261 mmol/kg in teleost fishes from 0 to 4,850 m. TMAO accumulation with depth results in increasing internal osmolality (typically 350 mOsmol/kg in shallow species compared with seawater's 1,100 mOsmol/kg). Preliminary extrapolation of osmolalities of predicted isosmotic state at 8,000-8,500 m may indicate a possible physiological limit, as greater depths would require reversal of osmotic gradients and, thus, osmoregulatory systems. We tested this prediction by capturing five of the second-deepest known fish, the hadal snailfish (Notoliparis kermadecensis; Liparidae), from 7,000 m in the Kermadec Trench. We found their muscles to have a TMAO content of 386 ± 18 mmol/kg and osmolality of 991 ± 22 mOsmol/kg. These data fit previous extrapolations and, combined with new osmolalities from bathyal and abyssal fishes, predict isosmotic state at 8,200 m. This is previously unidentified evidence that biochemistry could constrain the depth of a large, complex taxonomic group.
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