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Cyanobacteria play essential roles in marine primary productivity and the global carbon/nitrogen biogeochemical cycle. Increasing urea emissions and decreasing pH value in the ocean caused by human activities are changing the community structure and competitive interactions of marine phytoplankton, which will have a profound impact on the marine ecosystem and global biogeochemical cycle. Here, we report that a coastalSynechococcusstrain exhibited better adaptability to extreme low pH conditions when it uses urea as nitrogen source compared to using other inorganic nitrogen. Very low pH values can also alleviate damage by high concentrations of urea to cyanobacteria. Urease plays an essential role in this process.Synechococcusmutants with inactivated urease cannot adapt well to highly acidic environments, while heterologous expression of urease homologs from acidophilicHelicobacter pylorican help the cyanobacterial mutants to restore their adaptability to acidification. A TARA Oceans database analysis indicates that the distribution of cyanobacteria with the urease gene is closely related to estuaries and nearshore waters with potentially high urea inputs. In summary, we report for the first time that the use of urea and adaptation to acid stress are highly interactive in marine phytoplankton. Future work should determine whether this interaction is likely to allow phytoplankton that utilize urea to have a competitive advantage in the future ocean with high urea emissions and environmentally relevant pH scenarios.

Marine cyanobacteria contribute to approximately half of the ocean primary production, and their biomass is limited by low iron (Fe) bioavailability in many regions of the open seas. The mechanisms by which marine cyanobacteria overcome Fe limitation remain unclear. In this study, multiple Fe uptake pathways have been identified in a coastal strain of Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002. A total of 49 mutants were obtained by gene knockout methods, and 10 mutants were found to have significantly decreased growth rates compared to the wild type (WT). The genes related to active Fe transport pathways such as TonB-dependent transporters and the synthesis and secretion of siderophores are found to be essential for the adaptation of Fe limitation in Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002. By comparing the Fe uptake pathways of this coastal strain with other open-ocean cyanobacterial strains, it can be concluded that the Fe uptake strategies from different cyanobacteria have a strong relationship with the Fe bioavailability in their habitats. The evolution and adaptation of cyanobacterial iron acquisition strategies with the change of iron environments from ancient oceans to modern oceans are discussed. This study provides new insights into the diversified strategies of marine cyanobacteria in different habitats from temporal and spatial scales. IMPORTANCE Iron (Fe) is an important limiting factor of marine primary productivity. Cyanobacteria, the oldest photosynthetic oxygen-evolving organisms on the earth, play crucial roles in marine primary productivity, especially in the oligotrophic ocean. How they overcome Fe limitation during the long-term evolution process has not been fully revealed. Fe uptake mechanisms of cyanobacteria have been partially studied in freshwater cyanobacteria but are largely unknown in marine cyanobacterial species. In this paper, the characteristics of Fe uptake mechanisms in a coastal model cyanobacterium, Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, were studied. Furthermore, the relationship between Fe uptake strategies and Fe environments of cyanobacterial habitats has been revealed from temporal and spatial scales, which provides a good case for marine microorganisms adapting to changes in the marine environment.

We present a class of two-dimensional memristive maps with a cosine memristor. The memristive maps do not have any fixed points, so they belong to the category of nonlinear maps with hidden attractors. The rich dynamical behaviors of these maps are studied and investigated using different numerical tools, including phase portrait, basins of attraction, bifurcation diagram, and Lyapunov exponents. The two-parameter bifurcation analysis of the memristive map is carried out to reveal the bifurcation mechanism of its dynamical behaviors. Based on our extensive simulation studies, the proposed memristive maps can produce hidden periodic, chaotic, and hyper-chaotic attractors, exhibiting extremely hidden multi-stability, namely the coexistence of infinite hidden attractors, which was rarely observed in memristive maps. Potentially, this work can be used for some real applications in secure communication, such as data and image encryptions.

This paper studies a new class of two-dimensional rational maps exhibiting self-excited and hidden attractors. The mathematical model of these maps is firstly formulated by introducing a rational term. The analysis of existence and stability of the fixed points in these maps suggests that there are four types of fixed points, i.e., no fixed point, one single fixed point, two fixed points and a line of fixed points. To investigate the complex dynamics of these rational maps with different types of fixed points, numerical analysis tools, such as time histories, phase portraits, basins of attraction, Lyapunov exponent spectrum, Lyapunov (Kaplan–Yorke) dimension and bifurcation diagrams, are employed. Our extensive numerical simulations identify both self-excited and hidden attractors, which were rarely reported in the literature. Therefore, the multi-stability of these maps, especially the hidden one, is further explored in the present work.