Diversity analysis of thermophilic hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs by carbon monoxide dehydrogenase amplicon sequencing using new primers

The microbial H(2)-producing (hydrogenogenic) carbon monoxide (CO)-oxidizing activity by the membrane-associated CO dehydrogenase (CODH)/energy-converting hydrogenase (ECH) complex is an important metabolic process in the microbial community. However, the studies on hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs had to rely on inherently cultivation and isolation methods due to their rare abundance, which was a bottleneck in ecological study. Here, we provided gene-targeted sequencing method for the diversity estimation of thermophilic hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs. We designed six new degenerate primer pairs which effectively amplified the coding regions of CODH genes forming gene clusters with ECH genes (CODHech genes) in Firmicutes which includes major thermophilic hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs in terrestrial thermal habitats. Amplicon sequencing by these primers using DNAs from terrestrial hydrothermal sediments and CO-gas-incubated samples specifically detected multiple CODH genes which were identical or phylogenetically related to the CODHech genes in Firmictes. Furthermore, we found that phylogenetically distinct CODHech genes were enriched in CO-gas-incubated samples, suggesting that our primers detected uncultured hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs as well. The new CODH-targeted primers provided us with a fine-grained (~ 97.9% in nucleotide sequence identity) diversity analysis of thermophilic hydrogenogenic carboxydotrophs by amplicon sequencing and will bolster the ecological study of these microorganisms. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00792-020-01211-y.