B-vitamins : past, present and future in the study of the coenzymes that built and maintain a habitable planet

Abstract

The B-vitamins (thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pyridoxine (B6) biotin (B7) and cobalamin (B12)) are organic molecules, similar to micronutrients in that they are required in trace amounts by all cells, although the requirement for a specific vitamin varies across organisms. Despite the fact that B-vitamins are the most frequently required growth factors by marine microorganisms, their concentrations as well as the processes controlling their distributions in the ocean are still unknown. The objective of this presentation is to show the importance of these coenzymes in oceanographic studies with respect to their evolutionary relevance on the different pathways of carbon fixation as well as on the efficiency of the so-called “biological pump of carbon”. We have used genomic information of marine microorganisms generated in the last few years to hypothesize the existence of other vitamins in the ocean that have not been measured yet such as pantothenic acid (vitamin B5)