Scaling laws link conserved gene-abundance distributions to adaptive expression in diatom communities worldwide
4 affiliations
- 1Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Galileo Galilei”, Università di Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
- 2Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli 80135, Italy
- 3Quantitative Life Sciences, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste 34151, Italy
- 4National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo 90133, Italy
Abstract
Marine microbes sustain Earth’s major biogeochemical cycles, yet how they maintain stable ecosystem functions across diverse environments remains unclear. We analyzed metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data from diatom communities sampled during the Tara Oceans global expedition. While gene abundance distributions remain statistically similar across sample, gene expression varies systematically across geographical locations, a global pattern we show reflects predictable scaling laws. Global distributions, scaling relationships, and variability among sampling stations are captured by a stochastic model linking gene abundance dynamics to gene expression. While colder waters are associated with higher transcriptional activity and warmer regions show more selective gene usage, we find that transcript abundance increases nonlinearly with transcript richness. This general scaling is captured by our model and suggests that diatom communities balance high expression of core genes with specific functional diversity. These scaling relationships hold consistently across ocean basins, with temperature, used as an effective large-scale environmental descriptor whose signature cannot be fully disentangled from spatial structure, sufficing to predict transcriptional patterns from genetic composition. Our findings reveal how the stability of gene-abundance structure in diatom ecosystems coexists with transcriptional variability, enabling flexible functional responses.
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BibTeX
@article{pigani2026scaling,
title = {{Scaling laws link conserved gene-abundance distributions to adaptive expression in diatom communities worldwide}},
author = {Emanuele Pigani and Kobe Simoens and Davide Bernardi and Lucia Campese and Daniele Iudicone and Sandro Azaele and Samir Suweis},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1073/pnas.2615743123},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2615743123},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Scaling laws link conserved gene-abundance distributions to adaptive expression in diatom communities worldwide
AU - Emanuele Pigani
AU - Kobe Simoens
AU - Davide Bernardi
AU - Lucia Campese
AU - Daniele Iudicone
AU - Sandro Azaele
AU - Samir Suweis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2615743123
UR - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2615743123
AB - Marine microbes sustain Earth’s major biogeochemical cycles, yet how they maintain stable ecosystem functions across diverse environments remains unclear. We analyzed metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data from diatom communities sampled during the Tara Oceans global expedition. While gene abundance distributions remain statistically similar across sample, gene expression varies systematically across geographical locations, a global pattern we show reflects predictable scaling laws. Global distributions, scaling relationships, and variability among sampling stations are captured by a stochastic model linking gene abundance dynamics to gene expression. While colder waters are associated with higher transcriptional activity and warmer regions show more selective gene usage, we find that transcript abundance increases nonlinearly with transcript richness. This general scaling is captured by our model and suggests that diatom communities balance high expression of core genes with specific functional diversity. These scaling relationships hold consistently across ocean basins, with temperature, used as an effective large-scale environmental descriptor whose signature cannot be fully disentangled from spatial structure, sufficing to predict transcriptional patterns from genetic composition. Our findings reveal how the stability of gene-abundance structure in diatom ecosystems coexists with transcriptional variability, enabling flexible functional responses.
SN - 0027-8424
SN - 1091-6490
ER -