Marine microbes metabolize a wide range of carbon and nitrogen sources, shaping global biogeochemical cycles. Despite being crucial at the global scale, the coupling between carbon and nitrogen remains poorly understood for individual metabolites and bacteria. By phenotyping a library of marine heterotrophic bacteria across increasingly complex carbon and nitrogen sources, we generated a snapshot of this coupling. Growth phenotypes were weakly explained by phylogeny, but could be organized around substrate properties, including C:N stoichiometry and degree of reduction, reflecting the interplay between carbon, nitrogen and energy constraints. Beyond these patterns, we found strain-specific characteristics of ecological relevance, including differences in nitrogen use efficiency, and instances where yields on individual substrates are surprisingly not predictive of yields on more complex nutrient combinations. Overall, our results point to a few organizing principles for the role of carbon-nitrogen substrates in marine heterotrophic bacteria, with implications for understanding microbial interactions and modeling global biogeochemical cycles.
Kratzl, F. P., Scott, H., Jayasinghe, S., Huges, K., Osborne, M., Sher, D., Segre, D.
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