23 October, 2023
Temperature is a key environmental variable that can hold sway over sensitive ecosystems and the creatures within them, right down to influencing the activity of individual cellular components. This includes the seawater and sediment microbiomes — the most abundant microbial marine communities in the oceans.
KAUST researchers along with scientists from across Europe have demonstratedarticle " id="return-reference-1" href="https://discovery.kaust.edu.sa/en/article/21442/k1997_marine-microbiome/#reference-1">[1] how temperature-driven enzyme selection shapes the growth and plasticity of these marine microbiomes. Their results show that thermal variation — the range of temperature oscillations around the mean annual temperature (MAT) — is a reliable predictor for modeling the adaptive response of microbial communities.