Surviving Starvation: Metabolic Mechanisms of Interaction between Phototrophs and Heterotrophs
Department of Marine Biology, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel
Prochlorococcus are a clade of photosynthetic marine cyanobacteria, which are highly abundant in the oligotrophic (nutrient poor) waters of the world oceans and are responsible for a large portion of global carbon fixation. Prochlorococcus can grow in the lab but quickly die off when facing nutrient stress. They can, however, survive nutrient starvation for months in the presence of some heterotrophic marine bacteria. We hypothesize that the key to this remarkable survival is cross feeding and nutrient recycling between the phototrophic and heterotrophic partners. We employ a combination of Genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs), transcriptomic and proteomics to identify nutrients exchanges driving this synergistic interaction.