Project description:Picocyanobacteria from the genus Synechococcus are ubiquitous in ocean waters. Their phylogenetic and genomic diversity suggests ecological niche differentiation, but the selective forces influencing this are not well defined. Marine picocyanobacteria are sensitive to Cu toxicity, so adaptations to this stress could represent a selective force within, and between, “species” also known as clades. We compared Cu stress responses in cultures and natural populations of marine Synechococcus from two co-occurring major mesotrophic clades (I and IV). Using custom microarrays and proteomics to characterize expression responses to Cu in the lab and field, we found evidence for a general stress regulon in marine Synechococcus. However, the two clades also exhibited distinct responses to copper. The Clade I representative induced expression of genomic island genes in cultures and Southern California Bight populations, while the Clade IV representative downregulated Fe-limitation proteins. Copper incubation experiments suggest that Clade IV populations may harbor stress-tolerant subgroups, and thus fitness tradeoffs may govern Cu-tolerant strain distributions. This work demonstrates that Synechococcus has distinct adaptive strategies to deal with Cu toxicity at both the clade and subclade level, implying that metal toxicity and stress response adaptations represent an important selective force for influencing diversity within marine Synechococcus populations.
Project description:In the unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942, essentially all promoter activities are under the control of the circadian clock in continuous light (LL) conditions. Here, we employed high-density oligonucleotide arrays to explore comprehensive profiles of genome-wide Synechococcus gene expression in wild type, kaiABC-null and kaiC-overexpressor strains under LL and continuous dark (DD) conditions. In the wild type strain more than 30% of transcripts significantly oscillated in a circadian fashion, peaking at subjective dawn and dusk. Such circadian control was nullified in kaiABC-null strains. Although KaiC has been proposed to globally repress gene expression, our analysis revealed that dawn expressing genes were upregulated by kaiC-overexpression, such that the clock was arrested at subjective dawn. Transfer of cells to continuous dark (DD) conditions from LL immediately suppressed expression of most of genes, while the clock keeps time even in the absence of transcriptional feedback. Thus, the Synechococcus genome seems primarily regulated by the light/dark cycles and dramatically modified by the protein-based circadian oscillator. Keywords: timecourse data (~48 hours under continuous light or darkness) from Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 (wild type, kaiABC-null, and inducible kaiC-overexpressor) strains