'Hot-Bunking' bacterium recycles iron to boost ocean metabolism

7:11 AM Tue 11 Jan 2011 GMT

'Got iron? It’s an essential nutrient for living things, but it’s scarce in the ocean. Scientists have found that a key marine bacterium, Crocosphaera watsonii, may have evolved a remarkable biochemical way to recycle iron for dual metabolic activities. - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution' Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that in the vast ocean where an essential nutrient?iron?is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron. By day, it uses iron in enzymes for photosynthesis to make carbohydrates; then by night, it appears to reuse the same iron in different enzymes to produce organic nitrogen for proteins. The bacterium, Crocosphaera watsonii, is one of the few marine microbes that can convert nitrogen gas into organic nitrogen, which (just as it does on land) acts as fertilizer to stimulate plant growth in the ...

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by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution