Top Papers in Environmental Science, Second Runner-Up (Tie): Bacterial weapons in the war on iron in the seas

摘要

"Hydroxamate Siderophores: Occurrence and Importance in the Atlantic Ocean" by Edward Mawji, Martha Gledhill, James A. Milton, and Eric P. Achterberg, University of Southampton (U.K.); Glen A. Tarran, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (U.K.); Simon Ussher, University of Plymouth (U.K.); Anu Thompson and George A. Wolff, University of Liverpool (U.K.); Paul ]. Worsfold, University of Plymouth (U.K.), 2008, 42 (23), 8675-8686; DOI 10.1021/es801884r.rn"Give me a half tanker of iron," joked oceanographer John Martin in 1989, "and I will give you an Ice Age." Martin wanted to provoke a reaction when he made this blunt comment as a way of summing up his hypothesis that biological growth in the ocean was limited by iron. Seeding a section of the ocean with iron would cause phytoplank-ton to flourish, he hypothesized.