Exploring gene expression responses of marine bacteria to environmental factors

Sammanfattning: Bacterioplankton are abundant in marine ecosystems, where they as “masters of transformation” of dissolved organic matter (DOM) are important for energy fluxes and biogeochemical cycles. However, the performance of bacteria in a changing marine environment influenced by anthropogenic activities is poorly understood. In this thesis, I did experiments with model bacteria and natural assemblages of bacteria, using microbiology methods combined with modern molecular tools, to investigate responses of marine bacteria to changes in environmental conditions like ocean acidification, organic pollution and organic matter released by phytoplankton. Experiments with a model gammaproteobacterium demonstrated that bacteria in stationary phase showed little responses to organic pollutants, whereas pollutants caused decreased bacterial growth and had a broad physiological impact on actively growing bacteria (as deduced from gene expression analysis). In an experiment with two distantly related marine model bacteria, we identified several important bacterial mechanisms, such as uptake of macromolecules and phosphonates, by which bacteria respond when exposed to DOM produced by photosynthetic dinoflagellates. Using natural bacterial communities in a Baltic Sea mesocosm experiment with the addition of river water from a forested or an agriculture influenced catchment area, we showed important interactions between river water type and the development of phytoplankton blooms that caused different bacterial gene expression activities. In the fourth set of experiments, marine bacterial communities were subjected to elevated CO2, to mimic ocean acidification, under high and low nutrient conditions in a mesocosm study. We found increased bacterial gene expression activity focused on maintaining pH homeostasis, but only under low nutrient conditions, indicating that bacteria focus on cell maintenance instead of growth when challenged by lowered pH. Finally, in a computational analysis, we compared genomes from yet uncultivated prokaryotes by two different strategies: metagenome assembled and single amplified genomes. Importantly, the analysis showed that both methods selected abundant taxa and generated nearly identical sequences in overlapping regions. To conclude, this thesis presents discoveries that will help form a better understanding of marine bacterial responses to present and future anthropogenic disturbances of marine ecosystems.