A single strain of marine bacteria called Alteromonas may consume as much dissolved carbon in the ocean as an entire, diverse bacterial community, according to a new study.

Unusual Bacteria Gobbles Up Carbon in the Ocean

By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe, Staff Writer    |   April 14, 2014 06:58pm ET

Underneath the floating debris in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: NOAA - Marine Debris Program. View full size image

A single strain of marine bacteria called Alteromonas may consume as much dissolved carbon in the ocean as an entire, diverse bacterial community, according to a new study.
The finding may help researchers better understand how carbon cycling works in marine ecosystems.
"We found that an individual bacterial strain was capable of consuming the same amount of carbon in the ocean as diverse [bacterial] communities," said study author Byron E. Pedler at the University of California, San Diego.
The researchers found the results surprising because of the immense diversity of molecules that constitute dissolved carbon in one form or another in the ocean, Pedler told Live Science.
Those molecules include both "young" carbon recently produced by phytoplankton — the tiny organisms that are the foundation of the marine food web, and really old carbon that is hundreds of years old. Some of this carbon consists of carbohydrates, but a significant portion of it "is simply uncharacterizable, in that even modern chemical techniques cannot determine what it is," Pedler said.

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