How a Marine Bacterium Adapts To Multiple Environments

摘要

Ahab chased a giant sperm whale through the seas for years. Sallie Chisholm has spent much of her professional career tracking far smaller denizens of the ocean: photosynthetic bacteria called Prochlorococcus. A marine microbiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Chisholm helped discover these microbes 20 years ago. Now, she and her colleagues have charted the distribution of Prochlorococcus across the Atlantic Ocean and found that various strains congregate at different depths and places.