Carbon is a keystone element in global biogeochemical cycles. It plays a fundamental role in biotic and abiotic processes in the ocean, which intertwine to mediate the chemistry and redox status of carbon in the ocean and the atmosphere. The interactions between abiotic and biogenic carbon (e.g. CO₂, CaCO₃, organic matter) in the ocean are complex, and there is a half-century-old enigma about the existence of a huge reservoir of recalcitrant dissolved organic carbon (RDOC) that equates to the magnitude of the pool of atmospheric CO₂. The concepts of the biological carbon pump (BCP) and the microbial loop (ML) shaped our understanding of the marine carbon cycle. The more recent concept of the microbial carbon pump (MCP), which is closely connected to those of the BCP and the ML, explicitly considers the significance of the ocean's RDOC reservoir and provides a mechanistic framework for the exploration of its formation and persistence. Understanding of the MCP has benefited from advanced ‘omics’ and novel research in biological oceanography and microbial biogeochemistry. The need to predict the ocean's response to climate change makes an integrative understanding of the BCP, ML and MCP a high priority. In this review, we summarize and discuss progress since the proposal of the MCP in 2010 and formulate research questions for the future.

中文翻译：

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海洋生物碳循环中不断发展的范式

碳是全球生物地球化学循环中的重要元素。它在海洋的生物和非生物过程中起着根本性的作用，这些过程相互交织，以介导海洋和大气中碳的化学和氧化还原状态。海洋中非生物碳和生物碳（例如，CO ₂，CaCO ₃，有机物）之间的相互作用非常复杂，关于存在巨大的顽固溶解有机碳（RDOC）存在一个半世纪的谜团等于大气中CO ₂池的大小。生物碳泵（BCP）和微生物环（ML）的概念塑造了我们对海洋碳循环的理解。与BCP和ML密切相关的微生物碳泵（MCP）的最新概念明确考虑了海洋RDOC储层的重要性，并为探索其形成和持久性提供了一个机械框架。对MCP的了解得益于生物海洋学和微生物生物地球化学方面的先进“组学”和新颖研究。预测海洋对气候变化的响应的需求使得对BCP，ML和MCP的综合理解成为当务之急。在这篇综述中，我们总结并讨论了自2010年提出MCP以来的进展，并提出了未来的研究问题。