Heterotrophic organic phosphorus

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Although aquatic biochemical ecologists have focused nearly exclusively on lytic processes for dissolved organic phosphorus utilization, heterotrophic bacteria can directly take up certain organic phosphorus compounds from their surrounding environment without prior hydrolysis (Table 9.2). E. coli is known to have two different processes by which glycerol 3-phosphate can be taken up without prior hydrolysis... 

Xpp Q phosphate-accumulating (heterotrophic) organisms without their phosphorus content... 

Because of its high organic content, the marine snow acts as a microhabitat that supports enhanced rates of heterotrophic microbial activity. The associated nutrient remineralization causes the seawater within and aroimd the marine snow to be characterized by elevated nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and low levels of O2. The importance of these suboxic and anoxic microzones to the marine cycling of the biolimiting elements is unknown but potentially significant. 

Heterotrophic respiration fueled by the rain of organic matter from the surface ocean is ubiquitous in marine sediments. Its rate determines one of the important characteristics of the sedimentary environment the depth of redox horizons below the sediment-water interface. Heterotrophic respiration is the process by which carbon and nutrients are returned to the water column it is important in the marine fixed nitrogen and sulfur cycles and the accumulation of metabolic products sets the conditions for the removal of phosphorus from the oceans in authigenic minerals. A great deal of effort has been directed toward quantifying the rates, pathways, and effects of metabolism in sediments. 

Table 2.1 Mass of phosphorus (P), fixed nitrogen (N), and organic carbon (C) in mmol m-2 in 1 m of the water column above the benthos, in the living benthos (autotrophic and heterotrophic), and in the top-most 1 m of sediments (solid and dissolved phases)...

Heterotrophic bacteria are now seen as potentially important links between dissolved resources and higher trophic levels (Vadstein et ah, 1993). This altered view of the role of bacteria has especially important consequences for conceptualizing the significance of bacteria in phosphorus dynamics at the base of the food web, because heterotrophic bacteria differ from phytoplankton in being relatively phosphorus-rich organisms (Vadstein, 2000). Heterotrophic bacterial metabolism of phosphorus is dependent not only on phosphorus availability but also on the availability of labile dissolved organic carbon in the immediate environment. 

Xppi phosphorus that is part of the organic molecules of heterotrophic bacteria... 

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