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Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor
How microbial metabolism is translated into cellular reproduction under energy-limited settings below the seafloor over long timescales is poorly understood. Here, we show that microbial abundance increases an order of magnitude over a 5 million-year-long sequence in anoxic subseafloor clay of the a...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Society for Microbiology
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
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author | Vuillemin, Aurèle Vargas, Sergio Coskun, Ömer K. Pockalny, Robert Murray, Richard W. Smith, David C. D’Hondt, Steven Orsi, William D. |
author_facet | Vuillemin, Aurèle Vargas, Sergio Coskun, Ömer K. Pockalny, Robert Murray, Richard W. Smith, David C. D’Hondt, Steven Orsi, William D. |
author_sort | Vuillemin, Aurèle |
collection | PubMed |
description | How microbial metabolism is translated into cellular reproduction under energy-limited settings below the seafloor over long timescales is poorly understood. Here, we show that microbial abundance increases an order of magnitude over a 5 million-year-long sequence in anoxic subseafloor clay of the abyssal North Atlantic Ocean. This increase in biomass correlated with an increased number of transcribed protein-encoding genes that included those involved in cytokinesis, demonstrating that active microbial reproduction outpaces cell death in these ancient sediments. Metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing all show that the actively reproducing community was dominated by the candidate phylum “Candidatus Atribacteria,” which exhibited patterns of gene expression consistent with fermentative, and potentially acetogenic, metabolism. “Ca. Atribacteria” dominated throughout the 8 million-year-old cored sequence, despite the detection limit for gene expression being reached in 5 million-year-old sediments. The subseafloor reproducing “Ca. Atribacteria” also expressed genes encoding a bacterial microcompartment that has potential to assist in secondary fermentation by recycling aldehydes and, thereby, harness additional power to reduce ferredoxin and NAD(+). Expression of genes encoding the Rnf complex for generation of chemiosmotic ATP synthesis were also detected from the subseafloor “Ca. Atribacteria,” as well as the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway that could potentially have an anabolic or catabolic function. The correlation of this metabolism with cytokinesis gene expression and a net increase in biomass over the million-year-old sampled interval indicates that the “Ca. Atribacteria” can perform the necessary catabolic and anabolic functions necessary for cellular reproduction, even under energy limitation in millions-of-years-old anoxic sediments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7542362 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | American Society for Microbiology |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75423622020-10-19 Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor Vuillemin, Aurèle Vargas, Sergio Coskun, Ömer K. Pockalny, Robert Murray, Richard W. Smith, David C. D’Hondt, Steven Orsi, William D. mBio Research Article How microbial metabolism is translated into cellular reproduction under energy-limited settings below the seafloor over long timescales is poorly understood. Here, we show that microbial abundance increases an order of magnitude over a 5 million-year-long sequence in anoxic subseafloor clay of the abyssal North Atlantic Ocean. This increase in biomass correlated with an increased number of transcribed protein-encoding genes that included those involved in cytokinesis, demonstrating that active microbial reproduction outpaces cell death in these ancient sediments. Metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing all show that the actively reproducing community was dominated by the candidate phylum “Candidatus Atribacteria,” which exhibited patterns of gene expression consistent with fermentative, and potentially acetogenic, metabolism. “Ca. Atribacteria” dominated throughout the 8 million-year-old cored sequence, despite the detection limit for gene expression being reached in 5 million-year-old sediments. The subseafloor reproducing “Ca. Atribacteria” also expressed genes encoding a bacterial microcompartment that has potential to assist in secondary fermentation by recycling aldehydes and, thereby, harness additional power to reduce ferredoxin and NAD(+). Expression of genes encoding the Rnf complex for generation of chemiosmotic ATP synthesis were also detected from the subseafloor “Ca. Atribacteria,” as well as the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway that could potentially have an anabolic or catabolic function. The correlation of this metabolism with cytokinesis gene expression and a net increase in biomass over the million-year-old sampled interval indicates that the “Ca. Atribacteria” can perform the necessary catabolic and anabolic functions necessary for cellular reproduction, even under energy limitation in millions-of-years-old anoxic sediments. American Society for Microbiology 2020-10-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ /pubmed/33024037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 Text en Copyright © 2020 Vuillemin et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Research Article Vuillemin, Aurèle Vargas, Sergio Coskun, Ömer K. Pockalny, Robert Murray, Richard W. Smith, David C. D’Hondt, Steven Orsi, William D. Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title | Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title_full | Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title_fullStr | Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title_full_unstemmed | Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title_short | Atribacteria Reproducing over Millions of Years in the Atlantic Abyssal Subseafloor |
title_sort | atribacteria reproducing over millions of years in the atlantic abyssal subseafloor |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
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