Zhiying Lu

Abstract The cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus has a conspicuously reduced genome causing it to require help from co-existing organisms for survival under a variety of stressful conditions. In this work we demonstrated that the heterotrophic bacterium Alteromonas macleodii EZ55 facilitated the survival of Prochlorococcus MIT9312 batch co-cultures as they entered stationary phase. We further showed that exudates from both Alteromonas and Prochlorococcus were responsible for this effect.

Abstract The CO2 content of Earth's atmosphere is rapidly increasing due to human consumption of fossil fuels. Models based on short-term culture experiments predict that major changes will occur in marine phytoplankton communities in the future ocean, but these models rarely consider how the evolutionary potential of phytoplankton or interactions within marine microbial communities may influence these changes.

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