Contact: Gina Hebert, Marine Biological Laboratory
508-717-1730; ghebert@mbl.edu
WOODS HOLE, Mass.— HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco today visited the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, where he demonstrated his strong commitment to marine science, exploration, and protection that is the legacy of his great-great-grandfather, the pioneering oceanographer Prince Albert I.
Marine Biological Laboratory Interim Co-Directors Neil Shubin and Melina Hale with HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco. Prince Albert II (right) presented the MBL with a sculpture of his great-great-grandfather, the pioneering oceanographer Prince Albert I. The original is on display in the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco.
Credit: Daniel Cojanu/UnderCurrent Productions.
His Serene Highness sailed on the MBL’s research collection vessel, The Gemma; viewed thousands of cephalopods and other marine species in its Marine Resources Center; and received a comprehensive overview of the marine and environmental research to which the MBL has been devoted for more than a century.
MBL research complements the mission of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, which the Prince founded in 2006 to take direct action for the protection of nature. The foundation sponsors research, technological innovation, and initiatives for social awareness to limit the impacts of climate change, protect biodiversity, and manage water resources.
“Our oceans are greatly under threat, despite their size and their vital contributions to humanity,” Prince Albert II said during his visit to the MBL. “This is the central issue of our time, an issue that is urgent and at the same time eternal, an issue for today and for future generations. To move forward at the United Nations, in Monaco, or here on the beautiful New England coast, we have only one resource, and that is knowledge, understanding, and science. Our sole resource is all of you.”
Prince Albert II then announced his foundation’s commitment to funding SeaBase at MBL, an open-access infrastructure for integrated data on marine organisms, their genomes, their microbiomes, and the environmental status of their habitats. SeaBase will synthesize critical information for the purpose of understanding and protecting marine biodiversity and ecosystems.
“The MBL is grateful for the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation in launching SeaBase,” said MBL Interim Co-Director Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago. “Marine ecosystems face increasing threats from habitat loss, pollution, and climate change. Understanding the mechanisms that sustain ocean health is an enormous challenge that MBL scientists are well positioned to address by investigating marine organisms and their associated microbiomes, especially changes that signal environmental stress.”
Prince Albert II attended a panel discussion, “Adapting to a Climate-Changed World,” led by Shubin and senior scientists from the MBL Ecosystems Center. The center is known for its long-term studies of ecological change, particularly in Arctic ecosystems and in coastal zones, and for its leadership in advising international policymakers on climate change.
Coming full circle, Prince Albert II ended the visit by viewing original volumes documenting the scientific discoveries of his ancestor, Prince Albert I of Monaco, who devoted much of his life to studying the oceans. Also on display was Prince Albert I’s chair from the L’Hirondelle, the first of four research vessels that he built for oceanographic exploration.
Beginning in 1885, Prince Albert I led 28 scientific expeditions in the Mediterranean and in the Arctic, taking biological samplings and oceanographic measures that were published in 65 volumes. The entire set, as well as the L’Hirondelle chair, are archived in the Marine Biological Laboratory-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library.
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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
CONTACT: Diana Kenney, Marine Biological Laboratory
508-289-7139; dkenney@mbl.edu
WOODS HOLE, Mass.— Move over, cyanobacteria! A large-scale study of the Earth’s surface ocean indicates the microbes responsible for fixing nitrogen there—previously thought to be almost exclusively photosynthetic cyanobacteria–include an abundant and widely distributed suite of non-photosynthetic bacterial populations.
A. Murat Eren (Meren) and Tom Delmont working with TARA Oceans data at the University of Chicago in 2017. Credit: Fran Jackson
The international study, published this week in Nature Microbiology, was led by A. Murat Eren (Meren) of the University of Chicago and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, and Tom O. Delmont of the University of Chicago.
Nitrogen fixation is a critical ecological process in which atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia, making nitrogen “bioavailable” to living organisms to use as a fundamental building block of DNA, RNA and proteins.
“Microbes that can fix nitrogen or carbon are at the center of the ecology of microbial communities in many environments, including the surface ocean,” Delmont says. “Prior to our study, it was thought that the marine microbes responsible for carbon fixation were also largely responsible for fixing nitrogen. It turns out not to be so simple.”
“The ability of microbes to fix nitrogen is vital to all life,” says David Mark Welch, MBL Director of Research. “This study expands our understanding of the biological diversity of nitrogen fixation by providing the first genomic evidence that non-photosynthetic bacteria on the ocean surface can carry out these reactions.”
Using anvi’o, a state-of-the-art, open-source bioinformatics platform to analyze metagenomes (the pool of DNA sequences that represent all the microbial organisms found in an environment), the team revealed insights into previously unknown marine microbes with nitrogen fixation capabilities affiliated with Proteobacteria as well as Planctomycetes, a prevalent bacterial phylum that has never been linked to nitrogen fixation before.
These newly described microbial populations occur widely and are particularly abundant in the Pacific Ocean, where they average an estimated 700,000 cells per liter of seawater and up to 3 million cells per liter—orders of magnitude more than previous estimates for non-cyanobacterial nitrogen fixers in the open ocean.
Using data generated from the TARA Oceans expedition from 2009 to 2013, Delmont and colleagues reconstructed about 1,000 microbial genomes from more than 30 billion short metagenomic sequences. Of those 1,000 genomes, nine contained the six genes that are required for nitrogen fixation, and yet lacked the genes needed for photosynthesis. This is the first genomic database of non-photosynthetic microorganisms inhabiting the open ocean and capable of fixing nitrogen.
Nexus between phylogeny and function of the newly discovered nitrogen fixers in surface ocean metagenomes. (a) Phylogenomic analysis of 432 Proteobacteria genomes and 43 Planctomycetes genomes that Delmont and colleagues characterized (including the nine non-photosynthetic N fixers) using a collection of 37 phylogenetic marker gene families. Layers surrounding the phylogenomic tree indicate genome size and taxonomy of each genome at the phylum and class level. (b) Functional network of the nine non-photosynthetic N fixers based on a total of 5,912 identified gene functions. Size and color of genomic nodes represent the number of detected functions and genomic taxonomy, respectively. The color of functional nodes indicates their occurrence in the different genomes. From Delmont et al (2018) Nature Microbiology, doi: 10.1038/s41564-018-0176-9
Because the team reconstructed and used near-complete genomes for their investigation (rather than using a single marker gene for nitrogen fixation), they could resolve the taxonomic affiliations of these nitrogen-fixing populations. They could also investigate their abundance and distribution patterns in the oceans and seas from which the samples came (the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Southern oceans and the Mediterranean and Red seas).
“We can now use these population genomes to guide the laboratory cultivation of nitrogen-fixing Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria from the open ocean,” Delmont says. “This will help us understand the conditions in which they fix nitrogen, the complexity of their functional lifestyles, and other aspects of their ecology that we cannot comprehend by just looking at their genomes, genes and inferred functions.”
Meren and Delmont began this research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 2015 with the support of a University of Chicago Lillie Innovation Award. Meren and his group continue to develop anvi’o, the open-source software platform used in this and other studies investigating the ecology and evolution of microbes through complex environmental sequencing data.
“Environmental metagenomes give us unadulterated access to the complexity of naturally occurring microbial populations,” Meren says. “While our ability to understand them is at the mercy of our molecular technologies and computational tools, it is refreshing to see both advancing rapidly, and there is still so much to discover. We look forward to seeing bench-side advances substantiating these initial insights into environmental populations that likely contribute to one of the most essential biochemical processes that make our planet tick.”
“This study is another example of how resolving genomes directly from the DNA of entire microbial communities is transforming our understanding of microbial diversity,” says co-author Christopher Quince of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
In addition to Delmont, Meren and Quince, other collaborators in this study include Alon Shaiber, Özcan C. Esen, and Sonny T. M. Lee of the University of Chicago, Michael S. Rappé of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Sandra L. McLellan of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Sebastian Lücker of Radboud University, The Netherlands.
Citation:
Delmont, T.O. et al (2018) Nitrogen-fixing populations of Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria are abundant in surface ocean metagenomes. Nature Microbiology, doi: 10.1038/s41564-018-0176-9.
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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
The Marine Biological Laboratory is pleased to announce the Friday Evening Lecture schedule for the summer of 2018. The hour-long talks are geared for a diverse and engaged audience and appeal to scientists and non-scientists alike.
The 2018 lineup of speakers will explore some of the most fascinating subjects in science today including the historical origins of the U.S. opioid crisis, understanding how the brain controls parenting behavior, and how “frugal science” can improve science accessibility to better human and planetary health to communities around the world.
The series kicks off June 15, 2018 and will run each Friday through August 10. All lectures are free and will be held at 8:00 PM in the MBL’s Lillie Auditorium, 7 MBL Street, Woods Hole and live-streamed at videocenter.mbl.edu.
Friday Evening Lectures are a long-standing tradition at the MBL, dating back to 1890 and given each year since then. The tradition of excellence has continued to the present day with the roster of lecturers including more than 30 Nobel Prize winners since 1970 including John Gurdon, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, who will deliver the August 11 Friday Evening Lecture.
The schedule is below. Stay tuned to mbl.edu/FEL for lecture abstracts and speaker bios.
June 15
E.B. Wilson History and Philosophy of Science Lecture
“Pain, Opioids, and the Search for Relief: A Political History”
Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
June 22
“What do Fungi Tell us About Neurodegenerative Disease?”
Amy Gladfelter, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
June 29
“How Fish Swim...and Walk and Fly: Using Biodiversity to Understand the Neural Control of Movement”
Melina Hale, The University of Chicago; MBL
July 6
Glassman Lecture
“Can the Brain's Structure Reveal its Function?”
Jeff Lichtman, Harvard University
July 13
“Frugal Science in the Age of Curiosity”
Manu Prakash, Stanford University
July 20
Forbes Lecture
“Neurobiology of Parenting Behavior”
Catherine Dulac, Harvard University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
July 27
“The Co-Evolution of Life and Rocks: Insights from Data-Driven Discovery”
Robert Hazen, Carnegie Institution for Science; George Mason University
August 3
Sager Lecture
“Life without Oxygen”
Dianne Newman, California Institute of Technology
August 10
Porter Lecture
“The Stability and Reversal of Cell Differentiation in Development”
John Gurdon, University of Cambridge; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2012)
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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.