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Annual Review of Marine Science - Volume 17, 2025
Volume 17, 2025
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A Global Inventory of Natural and Synthetic Estrogens in Aquatic Systems
Vol. 17 (2025), pp. 511–536More LessEstrogens are a group of endocrine disruptors that are recognized as a threat to the world's ecosystems and are easily transported through aquatic systems from mainly anthropogenic sources. To illustrate this growing problem, we have compiled a global overview of measured concentrations of natural and synthetic estrogens restricted to freshwater systems (lakes, rivers, and lagoons) and marine coastal and open ocean environments, focusing on estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2). We found that the cumulative risk quotient is high at 65% of 400 sampled sites, highlighting that estrogen pollution is a major environmental concern. Our investigation revealed that almost no information is available on the concentration levels of E1, E2, E3, and EE2 for the open ocean areas. However, their occurrence in all systems, including open seas, suggests that estrogens are not completely degraded during transport to and within the environment and may be more persistent than previously thought.
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How Big Is Big? The Effective Population Size of Marine Bacteria
Vol. 17 (2025), pp. 537–560More LessGenome-reduced bacteria constitute most of the cells in surface-ocean bacterioplankton communities. Their extremely large census population sizes (Nc) have been unfoundedly translated to huge effective population sizes (Ne)—the size of an ideal population carrying as much neutral genetic diversity as the actual population. As Ne scales inversely with the strength of genetic drift, constraining the magnitude of Ne is key to evaluating whether natural selection can overcome the power of genetic drift to drive evolutionary events. Determining the Ne of extant species requires measuring the genomic mutation rate, a challenging step for most genome-reduced bacterioplankton lineages. Results for genome-reduced Prochlorococcus and CHUG are surprising—their Ne values are an order of magnitude lower than those of less abundant lineages carrying large genomes, such as Ruegeria and Vibrio. As bacterioplankton genome reduction commonly occurred in the distant past, appreciating their population genetic mechanisms requires constraining their ancient Ne values by other methods.
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How Viruses Shape Microbial Plankton Microdiversity
Vol. 17 (2025), pp. 561–576More LessOne major conundrum of modern microbiology is the large pangenome (gene pool) present in microbes, which is much larger than those found in complex organisms such as humans. Here, we argue that this diversity of gene pools carried by different strains is maintained largely due to the control exercised by viral predation. Viruses maintain a high strain diversity through time that we describe as constant-diversity equilibrium, preventing the hoarding of resources by specific clones. Thus, viruses facilitate the release and degradation of dissolved organic matter in the ocean, which may lead to better ecosystem functioning by linking top-down to bottom-up control. By maintaining this equilibrium, viruses act as a key element of the adaptation of marine microbes to their environment and likely behave as a single evolutionary unit.
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Beyond Meta-Omics: Functional Genomics in Future Marine Microbiome Research
Vol. 17 (2025), pp. 577–592More LessWhen President Bill Clinton and Francis Collins, then the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, celebrated the near completion of the human genome sequence at the White House in the summer of 2000, it is unlikely that they or anyone else could have predicted the blossoming of meta-omics in the following two decades and their applications in modern human microbiome and environmental microbiome research. This transformation was enabled by the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies and sophisticated computational biology tools and bioinformatics software packages. Today, environmental meta-omics has undoubtedly revolutionized our understanding of ocean ecosystems, providing the genetic blueprint of oceanic microscopic organisms. In this review, I discuss the importance of functional genomics in future marine microbiome research and advocate a position for a gene-centric, bottom-up approach in modern oceanography. I propose that a synthesis of multidimensional approaches is required for a better understanding of the true functionality of the marine microbiome.
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Metabolic Flux Modeling in Marine Ecosystems
Helen Scott, and Daniel SegrèVol. 17 (2025), pp. 593–620More LessOcean metabolism constitutes a complex, multiscale ensemble of biochemical reaction networks harbored within and between the boundaries of a myriad of organisms. Gaining a quantitative understanding of how these networks operate requires mathematical tools capable of solving in silico the resource allocation problem each cell faces in real life. Toward this goal, stoichiometric modeling of metabolism, such as flux balance analysis, has emerged as a powerful computational tool for unraveling the intricacies of metabolic processes in microbes, microbial communities, and multicellular organisms. Here, we provide an overview of this approach and its applications, future prospects, and practical considerations in the context of marine sciences. We explore how flux balance analysis has been employed to study marine organisms, help elucidate nutrient cycling, and predict metabolic capabilities within diverse marine environments, and highlight future prospects for this field in advancing our knowledge of marine ecosystems and their sustainability.
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