Publication Date:
2013-03-16
Description:
Sediment-covered basalt on the flanks of mid-ocean ridges constitutes most of Earth's oceanic crust, but the composition and metabolic function of its microbial ecosystem are largely unknown. By drilling into 3.5-million-year-old subseafloor basalt, we demonstrated the presence of methane- and sulfur-cycling microbes on the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Depth horizons with functional genes indicative of methane-cycling and sulfate-reducing microorganisms are enriched in solid-phase sulfur and total organic carbon, host delta(13)C- and delta(34)S-isotopic values with a biological imprint, and show clear signs of microbial activity when incubated in the laboratory. Downcore changes in carbon and sulfur cycling show discrete geochemical intervals with chemoautotrophic delta(13)C signatures locally attenuated by heterotrophic metabolism.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lever, Mark A -- Rouxel, Olivier -- Alt, Jeffrey C -- Shimizu, Nobumichi -- Ono, Shuhei -- Coggon, Rosalind M -- Shanks, Wayne C 3rd -- Lapham, Laura -- Elvert, Marcus -- Prieto-Mollar, Xavier -- Hinrichs, Kai-Uwe -- Inagaki, Fumio -- Teske, Andreas -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Mar 15;339(6125):1305-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1229240.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. mark.lever@biology.au.dk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23493710" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Base Sequence
;
Carbon/*metabolism
;
Methane/*metabolism
;
Methanomicrobiales/classification/genetics/*metabolism
;
Methanosarcinales/classification/genetics/*metabolism
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Multigene Family
;
Phylogeny
;
Sequence Analysis, DNA
;
*Silicates
;
Sulfur/*metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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