Protection of nitrogenase from photosynthetic O₂ evolution in Trichodesmium: methodological pitfalls and advances over 30 years of research

Abstract

Highlights• We analyse conflicting results on nitrogenase location and activity in Trichodesmium • We highlight well-established and more novel or potential O2-reducing mechanisms • Finally, we discuss recent mechanistic models and propose new solving avenues

Spatial heterogeneity in the photobiology of phototrophs—questions and methods

“…Additionally, the overall metabolism of a community of phototrophs depends also on heterogeneity in the metabolic activity amongst single cells, which results in spatial gradients in cellular composition and metabolism. The spatial heterogeneity of cellular metabolism is an important aspect in understanding interactions among cells for instance in colonies of phototrophs (e.g., Microcystis or Trichodesmium (Eichner et al, 2023)), or in nitrogen fixing filamentous cyanobacteria (Hania et al, 2023). Importantly, such heterogeneity can be also observed in genetically identical microbial (monoclonal) cultures as a difference in cell composition or in metabolic behaviour (i.e., phenotypic heterogeneity) in microbial cultures (see reviews on the topic in (Ackermann, 2015;Van Boxtel et al, 2017) and practical examples in Section 3 and in (Strašková et al, 2019;Masuda et al, 2020)).…”