Microbe Profile: a widespread, fast-responding, 'interactive' marine bacterium.

is a marine heterotrophic bacterium with widespread distribution - from temperate to tropical oceans, and from surface to deep waters. Strains of exhibit considerable genomic and metabolic variability, and can grow rapidly on diverse organic compounds. is a model organism for the study of population genomics, physiological adaptations and microbial interactions, with individual genomes encoding diverse phenotypic traits influenced by recombination and horizontal gene transfer.