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Diazotrophy modulates cyanobacteria stoichiometry through functional traits that determine bloom magnitude and toxin production.

Nicole D WagnerFelicia S OsburnRaegyn B TaylorJeffrey A BackC Kevin ChamblissBryan W BrooksJ Thad Scott
Published in: Limnology and oceanography (2022)
Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are an increasing threat to water quality. The interactions between two eco-physiological functional traits of cyanobacteria, diazotrophy (nitrogen (N)-fixation) and N-rich cyanotoxin synthesis, have never been examined in a stoichiometric explicit manner. We explored how a gradient of resource N:phosphorus (P) affects the biomass, N, P stoichiometry, light-harvesting pigments, and cylindrospermopsin production in a N-fixing cyanobacterium, Aphanizomenon . Low N:P Aphanizomenon cultures produced the same biomass as populations grown in high N:P cultures. The biomass accumulation determined by carbon, indicated low N:P Aphanizomenon cultures did not have a N-fixation growth tradeoff, in contrast to some other diazotrophs that maintain stoichiometric N homeostasis at the expense of growth. However, N-fixing Aphanizomenon populations produced less particulate cylindrospermopsin and had undetectable dissolved cylindrospermopsin compared to non-N-fixing populations. The pattern of low to high cyanotoxin cell quotas across an N:P gradient in the diazotrophic cylindrospermopsin producer is similar to the cyanotoxin cell quota response in non-diazotrophic cyanobacteria. We suggest that diazotrophic cyanobacteria may be characterized into two broad functional groups, the N-storage-strategists and the growth-strategists, which use N-fixation differently and may determine patterns of bloom magnitude and toxin production in nature.
Keyphrases
  • minimally invasive
  • escherichia coli
  • single cell
  • water quality
  • cell therapy
  • genome wide
  • magnetic resonance
  • genetic diversity
  • dna methylation
  • risk assessment
  • mesenchymal stem cells
  • plant growth