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the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Inhibition of nitrogenase by oxygen in marine cyanobacteria controls the global nitrogen and oxygen cycles
Abstract. Cyanobacterial N2-fixation supplies the vast majority of biologically accessible inorganic nitrogen to nutrient-poor aquatic ecosystems. The process, catalyzed by the heterodimeric protein complex, nitrogenase, is thought to predate that of oxygenic photosynthesis. Remarkably, while the enzyme plays such a critical role in Earth's biogeochemical cycles, the activity of nitrogenase in cyanobacteria is markedly inhibited in vivo at a post-translational level by the concentration of O2 in the contemporary atmosphere leading to metabolic and biogeochemical inefficiency in N2 fixation. We illustrate this crippling effect with data from Trichodesmium spp. an important contributor of "new nitrogen" to the world's subtropical and tropical oceans. The enzymatic inefficiency of nitrogenase imposes a major elemental taxation on diazotrophic cyanobacteria both in the costs of protein synthesis and for scarce trace elements, such as iron. This restriction has, in turn, led to a global limitation of fixed nitrogen in the contemporary oceans and provides a strong biological control on the upper bound of oxygen concentration in Earth's atmosphere.
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RC S105: 'Much ado about nothing?', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Mar 2005
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RC S138: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Apr 2005
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RC S199: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #3, 25 May 2005
Interactive discussion
- Printer-friendly version
- Supplement
-
RC S105: 'Much ado about nothing?', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Mar 2005
-
RC S138: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Apr 2005
-
RC S199: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #3, 25 May 2005
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Cited
10 citations as recorded by crossref.
- Ocean Biogeochemistry in GFDL's Earth System Model 4.1 and Its Response to Increasing Atmospheric CO2 C. Stock et al. 10.1029/2019MS002043
- Metal limitation of cyanobacterial N2fixation and implications for the Precambrian nitrogen cycle A. ZERKLE et al. 10.1111/j.1472-4669.2006.00082.x
- Nitrogen‐fixing bacteria associated with copepods in coastal waters of the North Atlantic Ocean R. Scavotto et al. 10.1111/1462-2920.12777
- Exploiting Biological Nitrogen Fixation: A Route Towards a Sustainable Agriculture A. Soumare et al. 10.3390/plants9081011
- Evaluation of the potential hydrogen production by diazotrophic Burkholderia species H. Terrazas-Hoyos et al. 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2013.12.049
- N2 fixation in free‐floating filaments of Trichodesmium is higher than in transiently suboxic colony microenvironments M. Eichner et al. 10.1111/nph.15621
- Deciphering Microbial Community and Nitrogen Fixation in the Legume Rhizosphere Y. Yang et al. 10.1021/acs.jafc.3c09160
- Nitrogenase Inhibition Limited Oxygenation of Earth’s Proterozoic Atmosphere J. Allen et al. 10.1016/j.tplants.2019.07.007
- Transcriptomic analysis of the red seaweed Laurencia dendroidea (Florideophyceae, Rhodophyta) and its microbiome L. de Oliveira et al. 10.1186/1471-2164-13-487
- Morphological and isotopic changes of heterocystous cyanobacteria in response to N2 partial pressure S. Silverman et al. 10.1111/gbi.12312
