Publications

Mixotrophic growth of a ubiquitous marine diatom

Kumar M, Tibocha-Bonilla JD, Füssy Z, Lieng C, Schwenck SM, Levesque AV, Al-Bassam MM, Passi A, Neal M, Zuniga C, Kaiyom F, Espinoza JL, Lim H, Polson SW, Allen LZ, Zengler K

PMID: 39018398

Abstract

Diatoms are major players in the global carbon cycle, and their metabolism is affected by ocean conditions. Understanding the impact of changing inorganic nutrients in the oceans on diatoms is crucial, given the changes in global carbon dioxide levels. Here, we present a genome-scale metabolic model (MK1961) for , an in silico resource to understand uncharacterized metabolic functions in this ubiquitous diatom. MK1961 represents the largest diatom metabolic model to date, comprising 1961 open reading frames and 6718 reactions. With MK1961, we identified the metabolic response signature to cope with drastic changes in growth conditions. Comparing model predictions with Oceans transcriptomics data unraveled 's metabolism in situ. Unexpectedly, the diatom only grows photoautotrophically in 21% of the sunlit ocean samples, while the majority of the samples indicate a mixotrophic (71%) or, in some cases, even a heterotrophic (8%) lifestyle in the light. Our findings highlight s metabolic flexibility and its potential role in global carbon cycling.