Marine waste management: Recycling efficiency by marine microbes
The widespread success of marine thaumarchaea arises largely from their ability to convert trace concentrations of ammonia to nitrite, which gives them energy to fix carbon and produce new biomass in the absence of light. This process, termed nitrification, recycles the chemical energy originally derived from photosynthesis by marine algae and is an essential component of global nutrient cycling. Using a radiotracer approach, a team of researchers from the Biology Centre Czech Academy of Sciences (Budweis, Czechia), MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen (Germany), and Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Bremen, Germany) has now determined that archaea fix roughly 3 moles of carbon for every 10 moles of ammonia oxidized, and this efficiency varies with cellular adaptations to phosphorus limitation.