Microbe Preferences Drive Ocean Carbon Pump

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By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Just a spoonful of ocean water is home to millions of microbes—tiny, single-celled organisms that play crucial roles in the ocean’s biogeochemical processes. A new study in Science illuminates which organic particles these microbes prefer to munch on, aiding scientists’ understanding of how carbon moves through the ocean on a larger scale. ...The movement of carbon from the surface of the ocean to depth, known as the biological carbon pump, helps control the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Microbes are key to this system, as they degrade organic particles as they consume them. That process releases carbon. ...The study investigated how microbes break down lipids—carbon-containing molecules that make up around 20% of organic particles in the ocean. Scientists know that some lipids reach the deep ocean, whereas others are degraded along the way. The team wanted to learn what factors might influence lipids’ fate. ...The team also found that bacteria’s lipid preferences affected how quickly a lipid was degraded, which determines how deep the particles can sink into the ocean. A particle that is quickly degraded doesn’t sink very far, whereas a particle that is slowly degraded, or not degraded at all, sinks farther.... 

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