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...
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Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7542362 2023-05-15T17:34:58+02:00 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. 2020-10-06 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 en eng American Society for Microbiology http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 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/) . CC-BY mBio Research Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 2020-10-25T00:23:08Z 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. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) mBio 11 5 |
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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 |
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Research Article |
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 |
Text |
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 |
title |
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_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_sort |
atribacteria reproducing over millions of years in the atlantic abyssal subseafloor |
publisher |
American Society for Microbiology |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
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North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
mBio |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542362/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
op_rights |
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/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01937-20 |
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mBio |
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11 |
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5 |
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