Interactions between marine bacteria: patterns, mechanisms and models

Marine microorganisms perform one-half of the primary production on our planet, forming the base of a food chain that feeds plankton, fish and ultimately human societies. Laboratory experiments have suggested that some marine microbes interact through symbiosis, allelopathy, competition, and parasitism, but many questions remain:  How common are such interactions in the marine environment?  What are the molecular mechanisms involved?  And what is the impact of these interactions in nature, on a global scale?  In the presentation I will first describe a high-throughput method to measure the effect of microbial interactions between Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic microbe in the oceans, and co-occurring heterotrophic bacteria.   I will then discuss some insights on the mechanism of these interactions, and finally discuss our approach towards describing microbial interactions in mathematical models of ocean phytoplankton.