Marine microbes eat
polysaccharides, except
that sometimes they don’t.
Andrew D. Steen – University of North
Carolina at Chapel HillI measured the rates at which dissolved
polysaccharides are degraded by microbes in seawater. Differences in
those rates among locations suggest that the reactivity of dissolved organic
matter in seawater is determined by the nature of the microbial community as
well as the chemical characteristics of organic matter. If seawater
microbial communities in the Arctic Ocean begin to access a wider range of
dissolved organic molecules as temperatures warm in the future, more
organic matter may be converted to carbon dioxide in the Arctic Ocean.
Dissertation Haiku
For all you struggling PhD students out there.