Oceanic microorganisms perform one-half of the primary production on our planet, and form the base of the marine food chain. Understanding the dynamics of how these microbes live and die, and the fluxes of energy and nutrients within the community, is necessary in order to develop predictive models of marine ecosystems and their relationship to global nutrient and carbon cycles. While cell growth in marine microbes has been intensively characterized, very few laboratory or modeling studies have addressed “natural” senescence and cell death, e.g. due to nutrient starvation. Our study aims to characterize, using physiological, biochemical and genetic tools, the process of cell death in nutrient-limited batch cultures of Prochlorococcus, perhaps the most abundant primary producer in the oceans.
