Seminar

Oxygen is not only essential for the aerobic respiration of marine organisms, but also plays an important role in biogeochemical cycling of elements such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. With anthropogenic influences, decreased dissolved O2 concentrations has been observed in coastal waters around the world over the past 50 years. With the trend of decreasing O2 concentration, heterotrophic respiration is increasingly channeled through microbial community metabolism. Ocean deoxygenation is thus expected to increase the role of microbial community in heterotrophic respiration and, by extension, nutrient cycling. Despite its importance in ocean deoxygenation, microbial respiration in key marine microbes, and in particular microbial eukaryotes, remains underexplored. To create new knowledge on microbial responses to declining oxygen, and develop predictive rate equations, we explored respiration kinetics in a model bacterium, microeukaryote, and coastal microbial community.

Additional information: Mr. CHEUNG Lok Shan, Henry, hlsc@connect.hku.hk