The Role of Encapsulin Nanocompartments in Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation

Abstract

Marine cycling of Nitrogen, a limiting resource for much of the ocean’s primary producers, remains imperfectly understood. In this paper, we attempt to study anaerobic ammonium oxidation or anammox, a biogeochemical process accounting for 29% of global marine fixed nitrogen losses, by examining E. coli engineered to produce proteins thought to be involved in this process (Giessen and Silver 2017). Through scanning electron microscopy, we demonstrate the feasibility of using E. coli to study this process, and discuss how best to isolate these proteins in a solution for further research.