Marine microbes eat
polysaccharides, except
that sometimes they don’t.

Andrew D. Steen

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I measured the rates at which dissolved polysaccharides are degraded by microbes in seawater.  Differences in those rates among locations suggest that the reactivity of dissolved organic matter in seawater is determined by the nature of the microbial community as well as the chemical characteristics of organic matter.  If seawater microbial communities in the Arctic Ocean begin to access a wider range of dissolved organic molecules  as temperatures warm in the future, more organic matter may be converted to carbon dioxide in the Arctic Ocean.