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Diatoms (unicellular algae with a silicate frustule) obtain their energy in sunlight through photosynthesis. This process also produces oxygen, which penetrates deeper into the seabed than light. Diatoms use part of this oxygen for their cellular respiration, exactly like animals and humans “breathe” with oxygen. However, diatoms can survive buried in the seabed, where neither light nor oxygen is available. Here, they respire with nitrate instead of oxygen. For prokaryotes (i.e., organisms without a nucleus such as bacteria), several metabolic pathways of nitrate respiration are described. Eukaryotes (i.e., organisms with a nucleus, such as diatoms) that are able to carry out both photosynthesis and nitrate respiration, however, have previously not been known. The pathway of nitrate respiration discovered in diatoms is Dissimilatory Nitrate Reduction to Ammonium (DNRA). Here, nitrate (NO3-) is first reduced to nitrite (NO2-) and then to ammonium (NH4+).
Anja Kamp, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
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