shoppingnews: @*Role of Bacteria in Marine Biogeochemical Cycles and Reactions

Biogeochemical reactions govern the cycles that run our universe, and bacteria play a crucial role with this process. This article explains what bacteria do in marine environments for these biogeochemical cycles.
First, some clarification on which precisely we're speaking about here. Biogeochemical cycles refer to the movement of assorted chemical elements between living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) systems within the environment, here marine. While virtually every element available on this planet are cycled a single way or any other, there are four main elements we need to be concerned with: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, all important to life here on Earth and critical to broader processes such as climate change and evolution.
These various elements are not found in their 'pure' form, but instead in compounds with elements, which can vary by where they are found in the cycle. Carbon and oxygen, for instance, form skin tightening and, or carbonate ions, as well as form sugars and proteins within living organisms. All of these 4 elements have forms that are seen in the atmosphere, in rocks, within the soil, in water, and in the living body. Each of these locations could be thought of as a 'pool' through which these elements are collected and held for the period of time before being forwarded to the next portion in the cycle. We will be primarily concerned in this article inside the role that bacteria plays for a job being within the cycle mainly because it occurs in marine environments.
Seawater has a lot of sulfur, especially in comparison to most soils and the atmosphere. In these marine environments, some types of bacteria act to lessen sulfur primarily inside the form of sulphate, often inside a chemosynthetic reaction in anaerobic conditions, substituting sulfur for oxygen to generate the electrons required, to generate the carbon-based compounds they have to survive.
To input it in slightly less technical terms, certain types of bacteria can, in conditions without either light nor oxygen as is present in the depths in the ocean, create the energy they need through a number of chemical reactions using sulfur. This is very completely different from life here at first glance, where life forms require both light and oxygen to survive. Granted most life forms depend upon photosynthetic and never chemosynthetic reactions to power themselves anyway, as chemosynthetic-based organisms are merely really common around hydrothermal offshore vents, yet it's still an amazing evolutionary adaptation so that populations of animals where we'd otherwise think nothing could survive.
There will also be some bacteria who have photosynthetic yet anaerobic processes, primarily in estuaries. Here, it's most useful to aid in decomposition of (carbon-based) organic materials, which otherwise typically requires oxygen which is not accessible in certain parts of estuaries as a result of poor water mixing.
Bacteria also plays a huge role in nitrogen cycles. In a marine environment, cyanobacteria (blue green algae) works to 'fix' nitrogen, that is certainly, that will put it in a form that is certainly then usable with other life forms. From there, the fixed nitrogen can follow a couple of pathways, nitrification which results in the creation of energy for your organism, or ammonia assimilation, by which the nitrogen is added to the biomass from the organism. It should be noted it was cyanobacteria that created most in the oygen inside our atmosphere today.
There are also bacteria that work well to 'de-fix' the nitrogen seen in dead organisms, a decomposition process called denitrifying that returns nitrogen to the environment.
There really isn't much literature with this topic out there that is accessible to absolute laymen, but with knowledge of some rudimentary biochemistry, allow me to share a number of mildly technical reads for additional on the subject:
Interactions between your Carbon and Sulphur Cycles within the Marine Environment (from The Major Biogeochemical Cycles along with their Interactions resource.)
Life and Biogeochemical Cycles.
Evolutionary Biology: Ecosystems.

วันพุธที่ 20 สิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2557

@*Role of Bacteria in Marine Biogeochemical Cycles and Reactions

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