The adaptive mechanisms of the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii to long‐term high CO₂ and warming

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2024 papers

Abstract

While it is known that increased dissolved CO₂ concentrations and rising sea surface temperature (ocean warming) can act interactively on marine phytoplankton, the ultimate molecular mechanisms underlying this interaction on a long-term evolutionary scale are relatively unexplored. Here, we performed transcriptomics and quantitative metabolomics analyses, along with a physiological trait analysis, on the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii adapted for approximately 3.5 years to warming and/or high CO₂ conditions. We show that long-term warming has more pronounced impacts than elevated CO₂ on gene expression, resulting in a greater number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The largest number of DEGs was observed in populations adapted to warming + high CO₂, indicating a potential synergistic interaction between these factors. We further identified the metabolic pathways in which the DEGs function and the metabolites with significantly changed abundances. We found that ribosome biosynthesis-related pathways were upregulated to meet the increased material and energy demands after warming or warming in combination with high CO₂. This resulted in the upregulation of energy metabolism pathways such as glycolysis, photorespiration, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway, as well as the associated metabolites. These metabolic changes help compensate for reduced photochemical efficiency and photosynthesis. Our study emphasizes that the upregulation of ribosome biosynthesis plays an essential role in facilitating the adaptation of phytoplankton to global ocean changes and elucidates the interactive effects of warming and high CO₂ on the adaptation of marine phytoplankton in the context of global change.

Related Papers

• → Availability of well‐defined iron colloids to the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii(1990)235 cited
• → Integration of TiO2 into the diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii during frustule synthesis(2013)56 cited
• → Influences of diatom frustule morphologies on protein adsorption behavior(2014)32 cited
• → Diatom frustules with different silica contents affect copepod grazing due to differences in the nanoscale mechanical properties(2021)22 cited
• Effect of zeolitic products in the nutritive quality of the diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii(2004)