Publications by authors named "Matthew McIlvin"

is a major contributor to infections in humans and is widely distributed in the environment. It is capable of aerobic and anaerobic growth, providing adaptability to environmental changes and in confronting immune responses. We applied high-throughput native 2-dimensional metalloproteomics to under oxic and anoxic conditions.

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Zinc is central to the function of many proteins, yet the mechanisms of zinc homeostasis and their interplay with other cellular systems remain underexplored. In this study, we employ data-dependent acquisition (DDA) and data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry to investigate proteome changes in under conditions of different zinc availability. Using these methods, we detected 2143 unique proteins, 1578 of which were identified by both DDA and DIA.

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Mass spectrometry (MS)-based metaproteomics is used to identify and quantify proteins in microbiome samples, with the frequently used methodology being Data-Dependent Acquisition mass spectrometry (DDA-MS). However, DDA-MS is limited in its ability to reproducibly identify and quantify lower abundant peptides and proteins. To address DDA-MS deficiencies, proteomics researchers have started using Data-Independent Acquisition Mass Spectrometry (DIA-MS) for reproducible detection and quantification of peptides and proteins.

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Article Synopsis
  • Primary production in the sunlit ocean relies on nutrients like nitrate, phosphate, and iron, which are essential for phytoplankton to convert CO2 into biomass.
  • Microbial metabolism in the upper mesopelagic 'twilight zone' (200-500 m) is believed to be constrained by the availability of organic carbon.
  • The study reveals high concentrations of siderophores, indicating iron deficiency in both the surface and twilight zone of the eastern Pacific Ocean, suggesting that low iron availability may limit microbial metabolism across larger areas of the ocean, impacting carbon storage.
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The remarkable pace of genomic data generation is rapidly transforming our understanding of life at the micron scale. Yet this data stream also creates challenges for team science. A single microbe can have multiple versions of genome architecture, functional gene annotations, and gene identifiers; additionally, the lack of mechanisms for collating and preserving advances in this knowledge raises barriers to community coalescence around shared datasets.

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Microeukaryotes are key contributors to marine carbon cycling. Their physiology, ecology, and interactions with the chemical environment are poorly understood in offshore ecosystems, and especially in the deep ocean. Using the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Clio, microbial communities along a 1050 km transect in the western North Atlantic Ocean were surveyed at 10-200 m vertical depth increments to capture metabolic signatures spanning oligotrophic, continental margin, and productive coastal ecosystems.

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Recent studies have demonstrated regional differences in marine ecosystem C:N:P with implications for carbon and nutrient cycles. Due to strong co-variance, temperature and nutrient stress explain variability in C:N:P equally well. A reductionistic approach can link changes in individual environmental drivers with changes in biochemical traits and cell C:N:P.

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In many oceanic regions, anthropogenic warming will coincide with iron (Fe) limitation. Interactive effects between warming and Fe limitation on phytoplankton physiology and biochemical function are likely, as temperature and Fe availability affect many of the same essential cellular pathways. However, we lack a clear understanding of how globally significant phytoplankton such as the picocyanobacteria will respond to these co-occurring stressors, and what underlying molecular mechanisms will drive this response.

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Coastal Antarctic marine ecosystems are significant in carbon cycling because of their intense seasonal phytoplankton blooms. Southern Ocean algae are primarily limited by light and iron (Fe) and can be co-limited by cobalamin (vitamin B). Micronutrient limitation controls productivity and shapes the composition of blooms which are typically dominated by either diatoms or the haptophyte .

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Zinc (Zn) is a key micronutrient used by phytoplankton for carbon (C) acquisition, yet there have been few observations of its influence on natural oceanic phytoplankton populations. In this study, we observed Zn limitation of growth in the natural phytoplankton community of Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica, due to low (~220 μatm) pCO2 conditions, in addition to primary iron (Fe) limitation. Shipboard incubation experiments amended with Zn and Fe resulted in significantly higher chlorophyll a content and dissolved inorganic carbon drawdown compared to Fe addition alone.

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Many marine microbes require vitamin B (cobalamin) but are unable to synthesize it, necessitating reliance on other B-producing microbes. Thus, phytoplankton and bacterioplankton community dynamics can partially depend on the production and release of a limiting resource by members of the same community. We tested the impact of temperature and B availability on the growth of two bacterial taxa commonly associated with phytoplankton: Ruegeria pomeroyi, which produces B and fulfills the B requirements of some phytoplankton, and Alteromonas macleodii, which does not produce B but also does not strictly require it for growth.

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Stealing prey plastids for metabolic gain is a common phenomenon among protists within aquatic ecosystems. Ciliates of the Mesodinium rubrum species complex are unique in that they also steal a transcriptionally active but non-dividing prey nucleus, the kleptokaryon, from certain cryptophytes. The kleptokaryon enables full control and replication of kleptoplastids but has a half-life of about 10 days.

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Enzymes catalyze key reactions within Earth's life-sustaining biogeochemical cycles. Here, we use metaproteomics to examine the enzymatic capabilities of the microbial community (0.2 to 3 µm) along a 5,000-km-long, 1-km-deep transect in the central Pacific Ocean.

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Scarce dissolved surface ocean concentrations of the essential algal micronutrient zinc suggest that Zn may influence the growth of phytoplankton such as diatoms, which are major contributors to marine primary productivity. However, the specific mechanisms by which diatoms acclimate to Zn deficiency are poorly understood. Using global proteomic analysis, we identified two proteins (ZCRP-A/B, Zn/Co Responsive Protein A/B) among four diatom species that became abundant under Zn/Co limitation.

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Cyanobacteria of the genus Trichodesmium provide about 80 Tg of fixed nitrogen to the surface ocean per year and contribute to marine biogeochemistry, including the sequestration of carbon dioxide. Trichodesmium fixes nitrogen in the daylight, despite the incompatibility of the nitrogenase enzyme with oxygen produced during photosynthesis. While the mechanisms protecting nitrogenase remain unclear, all proposed strategies require considerable resource investment.

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Ocean microbial communities are important contributors to the global biogeochemical reactions that sustain life on Earth. The factors controlling these communities are being increasingly explored using metatranscriptomic and metaproteomic environmental biomarkers. Using published proteomes and transcriptomes from the abundant colony-forming cyanobacterium (strain IMS101) grown under varying Fe and/or P limitation in low and high CO, we observed robust correlations of stress-induced proteins and RNAs (i.

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Pseudoalteromonas (BB2-AT2) is a ubiquitous marine heterotroph, often associated with labile organic carbon sources in the ocean (e.g. phytoplankton blooms and sinking particles).

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Metaproteomics is a powerful analytical approach that can assess the functional capabilities deployed by microbial communities in both environmental and biomedical microbiome settings. Yet, the mass spectra resulting from these mixed biological communities are challenging to obtain due to the high number of low intensity peak features. The use of multiple dimensions of chromatographic separation prior to mass spectrometry analyses has been applied to proteomics previously but can require increased sampling handling and instrument time.

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The keystone marine nitrogen fixer Trichodesmium thrives in high-dust environments. While laboratory investigations have observed that Trichodesmium colonies can access the essential nutrient iron from dust particles, less clear are the biochemical strategies underlying particle-colony interactions in nature. Here we demonstrate that Trichodesmium colonies engage with mineral particles in the wild with distinct molecular responses.

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Marine microeukaryotes play a fundamental role in biogeochemical cycling through the transfer of energy to higher trophic levels and vertical carbon transport. Despite their global importance, microeukaryote physiology, nutrient metabolism and contributions to carbon cycling across offshore ecosystems are poorly characterized. Here, we observed the prevalence of dinoflagellates along a 4,600-km meridional transect extending across the central Pacific Ocean, where oligotrophic gyres meet equatorial upwelling waters rich in macronutrients yet low in dissolved iron.

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Vast and diverse microbial communities exist within the ocean. To better understand the global influence of these microorganisms on Earth's climate, we developed a robot capable of sampling dissolved and particulate seawater biochemistry across ocean basins while still capturing the fine-scale biogeochemical processes therein. Carbon and other nutrients are acquired and released by marine microorganisms as they build and break down organic matter.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on Nitrospira marina Nb-295, a marine nitrite-oxidizing bacterium with an unexamined genome, to explore its metabolic abilities and adaptations in ocean environments.
  • Researchers confirmed that N. marina thrives on various organic carbon sources, can resist stressful conditions like low oxygen and UV light, and requires vitamin B, showcasing its metabolic versatility.
  • The analysis revealed that under low oxygen, N. marina enhances certain protein systems for efficient energy utilization, indicating its ability to adapt to changes in oxygen levels and maintain its role in nitrite oxidation in marine ecosystems.
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Despite very low concentrations of cobalt in marine waters, cyanobacteria in the genus retain the genetic machinery for the synthesis and use of cobalt-bearing cofactors (cobalamins) in their genomes. We explore cobalt metabolism in a isolate from the equatorial Pacific Ocean (strain MIT9215) through a series of growth experiments under iron- and cobalt-limiting conditions. Metal uptake rates, quantitative proteomic measurements of cobalamin-dependent enzymes, and theoretical calculations all indicate that MIT9215 can sustain growth with less than 50 cobalt atoms per cell, ∼100-fold lower than minimum iron requirements for these cells (∼5,100 atoms per cell).

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Fe is a critical nutrient to the marine biological pump, which is the process that exports photosynthetically fixed carbon in the upper ocean to the deep ocean. Fe limitation controls photosynthetic activity in major regions of the oceans, and the subsequent degradation of exported photosynthetic material is facilitated particularly by marine heterotrophic bacteria. Despite their importance in the carbon cycle and the scarcity of Fe in seawater, the Fe requirements, storage and cytosolic utilization of these marine heterotrophs has been less studied.

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Reactive oxygen species (ROS) like superoxide drive rapid transformations of carbon and metals in aquatic systems and play dynamic roles in biological health, signaling, and defense across a diversity of cell types. In phytoplankton, however, the ecophysiological role(s) of extracellular superoxide production has remained elusive. Here, the mechanism and function of extracellular superoxide production by the marine diatom are described.

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