Phenotypic plasticity in heterotrophic marine microbial communities in continuous cultures.
Phenotypic plasticity (PP) is the development of alternate phenotypes of a given taxon as an adaptation to environmental conditions. Methodological limitations have restricted the quantification of PP to the measurement of a few traits in single organisms. We used metatranscriptomic libraries to overcome these challenges and estimate PP using the expressed genes of multiple heterotrophic organisms as a proxy for traits in a microbial community. The metatranscriptomes captured the expression response of natural marine bacterial communities grown on differing carbon resource regimes in continuous cultures. We found that taxa with different magnitudes of PP coexisted in the same cultures, and that members of the order Rhodobacterales had the highest levels of PP. In agreement with previous studies, our results suggest that continuous culturing may have specifically selected for taxa featuring a rather high range of PP. On average, PP and abundance changes within a taxon contributed equally to the organism's change in functional gene abundance, implying that both PP and abundance mediated observed differences in community function. However, not all functional changes due to PP were directly reflected in the bulk community functional response: gene expression changes in individual taxa due to PP were partly masked by counterbalanced expression of the same gene in other taxa. This observation demonstrates that PP had a stabilizing effect on a community's functional response to environmental change.
1] CNRS, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d'Océanographie Microbienne, Banyuls/mer, France [2] Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d'Océanographie Microbienne, Observatoire Océanologique, Banyuls/mer, France.
Sara
S
Beier
US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA, USA.
Adam R
AR
Rivers
Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.
Mary Ann
MA
Moran
1] CNRS, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d'Océanographie Microbienne, Banyuls/mer, France [2] Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d'Océanographie Microbienne, Observatoire Océanologique, Banyuls/mer, France.
Ingrid
I
Obernosterer
D020561:Alphaproteobacteria / Q000502:physiology; D019295:Computational Biology; D000458:Cyanobacteria / Q000502:physiology; D017377:Diatoms; D017753:Ecosystem; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D052836:Heterotrophic Processes; D010641:Phenotype; D010802:Phylogeny; D012623:Seawater / Q000382:microbiology; D059467:Transcriptome; D014871:Water Microbiology