TY - JOUR T1 - Swimming in Light: A Large-Scale Computational Analysis of the Metabolism of Dinoroseobacter shibae A1 - Rex, Rene A1 - Bill, Nelli A1 - Schmidt-Hohagen, Kerstin A1 - Schomburg, Dietmar Y1 - 2013/10/03 N2 - Author Summary The oceans are home to a large variety of microorganisms, which interact in several ways with world-wide metabolic cycles. A representative of an important group of marine bacteria called the Roseobacter clade is Dinoroseobacter shibae. This organism is known to use a variant of photosynthesis to obtain energy from light. Another feature of D. shibae and many other Roseobacters is the ability to degrade an abundant compound in the ocean called dimethylsulfoniopropionate. Importantly, one degradation pathway of dimethylsulfoniopropionate releases a side product, which affects climate by seeding cloud formation. In this work, we constructed a genome-scale metabolic model of D. shibae and carried out a detailed computational analysis of its metabolism. Our model simulates the light-harvesting capabilities of D. shibae and also accounts for the energy needed to swim. Thanks to our exhaustive simulations we were able to elucidate the effect of light on the growth of D. shibae, to study the consequences of genetic perturbations, and to identify mutants which produce more cloud-seeding compounds. Foremost, our computational results help to understand an important part of the complex processes in the ocean in greater detail. Besides, they can be a valuable guide for future wet-lab experiments. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 9 IS - 10 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003224 SP - e1003224 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003224 ER -