Recent calculations indicate that the recycled biogenic flux of trace metals in surface seawater should overwhelm all other inputs. In order to address the question of the biological cycling of trace metals in surface seawater, this project will expand on the principal investigator's research on metal uptake by phytoplankton to study metal uptake by bacteria and the role of bacteria in the remineralization of biogenic metal compounds. This research will include studies of the kinetics of algal and bacterial uptake of Fe, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, and Cd, and the identification of metal uptake and metal storage compounds as well as metalloproteins, and the quantification of the mechanisms responsible for the release of the metals from these compounds.
