Trichodesmium AHL amendment metatranscriptomic reads accessions and metadata

Abstract

Trichodesmium is a marine, diazotrophic cyanobacterium that plays a central role in the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen. Colonies ubiquitously co-occur with a diverse microbiome of heterotrophic bacteria. Here we show that manipulation of the microbiome with quorum sensing acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) molecules significantly modulated rates of N2 fixation by Trichodesmium collected from the western North Atlantic, with both positive and negative effects of varied magnitude. Changes in Trichodesmium N2 fixation did not clearly correlate with changes in microbiome composition or geochemical patterns. Metatranscriptome sequencing revealed significant changes in the relative abundance of microbiome transcripts encoding metabolic functions consistent with quorum sensing responses in model bacteria. There was little overlap in specific microbiome transcriptional responses to AHL addition between stations, and this variability in microbiome gene expression may underpin the heterogeneous changes in Trichodesmium N2 fixation. These data suggest the microbiome could play a large and previously overlooked role in modulating Trichodesmium N2 fixation. This metadata form describes the metatranscriptomic sequencing reads that were used in the study.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/746654