ArticleNature communications2025
Urea use drives niche separation between dominant marine ammonia oxidizing archaea.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ecological significance of dark carbon fixation driven by ammonia oxidation in estuarine waters.Eco-Environment & Health · 2026Article
- Comparative phylogenomics of bacterial urease systems reveals architectural conservation, lineage-specific specialization, and candidate horizontal transfer.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2026Article
- Single-cell quantification reveals divergent mixotrophic strategies underlying niche partitioning in marineScience advances · 2026Article
- Article
- Cultivation and molecular profiling reveal ammonia-oxidizing archaea as skin commensals.The ISME journal · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are among the most abundant microorganisms in the ocean and play a critical role in marine nitrogen cycling. Recently, urea has been shown to serve as an additional substrate for marine AOA, with substantial urea use in the ammonium-depleted open-ocean. Yet, the mechanisms that control urea use and potentially maintain high AOA abundances remain unclear. Here, we investigate urea and ammonia use by AOA in three contrasting marine environments, from coastal, ammonium-rich to open-ocean, ammonium-poor waters. Our combined results indicate that distinct substrate utilization strategies of Nitrosopumilus and Nitrosopelagicus control their environmental distribution. The more coastal AOA genus, Nitrosopumilus, primarily uses ammonium. In contrast, enhanced urea utilization in ammonium-limited waters is linked to the activity and growth of Nitrosopelagicus. Thus, the use of urea, and potentially other organic-N compounds by Nitrosopelagicus plays a major role in fueling open-ocean nitrification and sustaining primary productivity in these vast regions.
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Registered trials
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