Heterotrophic microbial communities process much of the carbon fixed by phytoplankton in the ocean, thus having a critical role in the global carbon cycle. A major fraction of the phytoplankton-derived substrates are high-molecular-weight (HMW) polysaccharides. For bacterial uptake, these substrates must initially be hydrolysed to smaller sizes by extracellular enzymes. We investigated polysaccharide hydrolysis by microbial communities during a transect of the Atlantic Ocean, and serendipitously discovered—using super-resolution structured illumination microscopy—that up to 26% of total cells showed uptake of fluorescently labelled polysaccharides (FLA-PS). Fluorescence in situ hybridisation identified these organisms as members of the bacterial phyla Bacteroidetes and Planctomycetes and the gammaproteobacterial genus Catenovulum. Simultaneous membrane staining with nile red indicated that the FLA-PS labelling occurred in the cell but not in the cytoplasm. The dynamics of FLA-PS staining was further investigated in pure culture experiments using Gramella forsetii, a marine member of Bacteroidetes. The staining patterns observed in environmental samples and pure culture tests are consistent with a ‘selfish’ uptake mechanisms of larger oligosaccharides (>600 Da), as demonstrated for gut Bacteroidetes. Ecologically, this alternative polysaccharide uptake mechanism secures substantial quantities of substrate in the periplasmic space, where further processing can occur without diffusive loss. Such a mechanism challenges the paradigm that hydrolysis of HMW substrates inevitably yields low-molecular-weight fragments that are available to the surrounding community and demonstrates the importance of an alternative mechanism of polysaccharide uptake in marine bacteria.
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