ALBERT

Beschreibung: This data set was collected from incubations of sediment collected from the intertidal sandbank Janssand, behind the back barrier island Spiekeroog, in the German Wadden Sea. The rate of oxygen consumption (microsensor), hydrogen accumulation (GC), iron accumulation (ferrozine, chlorometric), and sulfate reduction (35S sulfate + acid-chromium distillation) were all measured in constantly mixed slurries, with and without the ROS-removing enzymes superoxide dismutase and catalase. It additionally includes depth profiles of oxygen and hydrogen peroxide in cores, determined with amperometric microsensors.

Beschreibung: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Hansel, C. M., Diaz, J. M., & Plummer, S.. Tight regulation of extracellular superoxide points to its vital role in the physiology of the globally relevant Roseobacter clade. Mbio, 10(2), (2019):e02668-18, doi:10.1128/mBio.02668-18.

Beschreibung: There is a growing appreciation within animal and plant physiology that the reactive oxygen species (ROS) superoxide is not only detrimental but also essential for life. Yet, despite widespread production of extracellular superoxide by healthy bacteria and phytoplankton, this molecule remains associated with stress and death. Here, we quantify extracellular superoxide production by seven ecologically diverse bacteria within the Roseobacter clade and specifically target the link between extracellular superoxide and physiology for two species. We reveal for all species a strong inverse relationship between cell-normalized superoxide production rates and cell number. For exponentially growing cells of Ruegeria pomeroyi DSS-3 and Roseobacter sp. strain AzwK-3b, we show that superoxide levels are regulated in response to cell density through rapid modulation of gross production and not decay. Over a life cycle of batch cultures, extracellular superoxide levels are tightly regulated through a balance of both production and decay processes allowing for nearly constant levels of superoxide during active growth and minimal levels upon entering stationary phase. Further, removal of superoxide through the addition of exogenous superoxide dismutase during growth leads to significant growth inhibition. Overall, these results point to tight regulation of extracellular superoxide in representative members of the Roseobacter clade, consistent with a role for superoxide in growth regulation as widely acknowledged in fungal, animal, and plant physiology.

Beschreibung: We thank Mary Ann Moran and Alison Buchan for providing Roseobacter cultures, Kevin Sutherland for providing helpful feedback on the manuscript, and Elizabeth Harvey for use of her flow cytometer. This research was supported by NSF OCE-1355720 and a WHOI Independent Study Award (27005303) to C.M.H., as well as a Junior Faculty Seed Grant from the University of Georgia Research Foundation to J.M.D. and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to S.P.

Beschreibung: Author Posting. © American Society for Microbiology, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Society for Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology 81 (2015): 2189-2198, doi:10.1128/AEM.03643-14.

Beschreibung: Water discharging from abandoned coal mines can contain extremely high manganese levels. Removing this metal is an ongoing challenge. Passive Mn(II) removal beds (MRBs) contain microorganisms that oxidize soluble Mn(II) to insoluble Mn(III/IV) minerals, but system performance is unpredictable. Using amplicon pyrosequencing, we profiled the bacterial, fungal, algal and archaeal communities in four variably-performing MRBs in Pennsylvania to determine whether they differed among MRBs and from surrounding soil, and to establish the relative abundance of known Mn(II)-oxidizers. Archaea were not detected; PCRs with archaeal primers returned only non-target bacterial sequences. Fungal taxonomic profiles differed starkly between sites that remove the majority of influent Mn and those that do not, with the former dominated by Ascomycota (mostly Dothideomycetes) and the latter by Basidiomycota (almost entirely Agaricomycetes). Taxonomic profiles for the other groups did not differ significantly between MRBs, but OTU-based analyses showed significant clustering by MRB with all four groups (p〈0.05). Soil samples clustered separately from MRBs in all groups except fungi, whose soil samples clustered loosely with their respective MRB. Known Mn(II) oxidizers accounted for a minor proportion of bacterial sequences (up to 0.20%) but a greater proportion of fungal sequences (up to 14.78%). MRB communities are more diverse than previously thought, and more organisms may be capable of Mn(II) oxidation than are currently known.

Beschreibung: This project was funded by Smithsonian Scholarly Studies and Next-Generation Sequencing grants to C.M.S., by a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship to D.L.C., and by the National Science Foundation, grant numbers EAR-1249489 (awarded to C.M.H.) and CBET-1336496 (awarded to C.M.H. and C.M.S.).

Beschreibung: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Farfan, G. A., Apprill, A., Cohen, A., DeCarlo, T. M., Post, J. E., Waller, R. G., & Hansel, C. M. Crystallographic and chemical signatures in coral skeletal aragonite. Coral Reefs. (2121), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-021-02198-4.

Beschreibung: Corals nucleate and grow aragonite crystals, organizing them into intricate skeletal structures that ultimately build the world’s coral reefs. Crystallography and chemistry have profound influence on the material properties of these skeletal building blocks, yet gaps remain in our knowledge about coral aragonite on the atomic scale. Across a broad diversity of shallow-water and deep-sea scleractinian corals from vastly different environments, coral aragonites are remarkably similar to one another, confirming that corals exert control on the carbonate chemistry of the calcifying space relative to the surrounding seawater. Nuances in coral aragonite structures relate most closely to trace element chemistry and aragonite saturation state, suggesting the primary controls on aragonite structure are ionic strength and trace element chemistry, with growth rate playing a secondary role. We also show how coral aragonites are crystallographically indistinguishable from synthetic abiogenic aragonite analogs precipitated from seawater under conditions mimicking coral calcifying fluid. In contrast, coral aragonites are distinct from geologically formed aragonites, a synthetic aragonite precipitated from a freshwater solution, and mollusk aragonites. Crystallographic signatures have future applications in understanding the material properties of coral aragonite and predicting the persistence of coral reefs in a rapidly changing ocean.

Beschreibung: This project was funded by the Mineralogical Society of America Edward H. Kraus Crystallographic Research Fund and the WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund. G. Farfan was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Grant No. 1122374 and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Sample collections from R. Waller were funded under NSF Grant Numbers 1245766, 1127582 and NOAA Ocean Exploration Deep Atlantic Stepping Stones. The authors thank Erik Cordes for the samples collected from the Gulf of Mexico, which were supported by NSF BIO-OCE Grant # 1220478. STZC collections from A. Apprill were funded by a Dalio Foundation (now ‘OceanX’) and a KAUST-WHOI Special Academic Partnership Funding Reserve with Christian Voolstra. Research and coral collections in Cuba were conducted under the LH112 AN (25) 2015 license granted by the Cuban Center for Inspection and Environmental Control with the assistance of Patricia Gonzalez and Michael Armenteros. Corals from Western Australia were collected under license number SF009558 obtained by M. McCulloch, and from the Maldives Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture with collection permits (No. (OTHR)30-D/INDIV/2013/359). Matthew Neave assisted with the collections.

Beschreibung: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bent, S. M., Miller, C. A., Sharp, K. H., Hansel, C. M., & Apprill, A. Differential patterns of microbiota recovery in symbiotic and aposymbiotic corals following antibiotic disturbance. Msystems, 6(2), (2021): e01086-20, https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.01086-20.

Beschreibung: Microbial relationships are critical to coral health, and changes in microbiomes are often exhibited following environmental disturbance. However, the dynamics of coral-microbial composition and external factors that govern coral microbiome assembly and response to disturbance remain largely uncharacterized. Here, we investigated how antibiotic-induced disturbance affects the coral mucus microbiota in the facultatively symbiotic temperate coral Astrangia poculata, which occurs naturally with high (symbiotic) or low (aposymbiotic) densities of the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate Breviolum psygmophilum. We also explored how differences in the mucus microbiome of natural and disturbed A. poculata colonies affected levels of extracellular superoxide, a reactive oxygen species thought to have both beneficial and detrimental effects on coral health. Using a bacterial and archaeal small-subunit (SSU) rRNA gene sequencing approach, we found that antibiotic exposure significantly altered the composition of the mucus microbiota but that it did not influence superoxide levels, suggesting that superoxide production in A. poculata is not influenced by the mucus microbiota. In antibiotic-treated A. poculata exposed to ambient seawater, mucus microbiota recovered to its initial state within 2 weeks following exposure, and six bacterial taxa played a prominent role in this reassembly. Microbial composition among symbiotic colonies was more similar throughout the 2-week recovery period than that among aposymbiotic colonies, whose microbiota exhibited significantly more interindividual variability after antibiotic treatment and during recovery. This work suggests that the A. poculata mucus microbiome can rapidly reestablish itself and that the presence of B. psygmophilum, perhaps by supplying nutrients, photosynthate, or other signaling molecules, exerts influence on this process. IMPORTANCE Corals are animals whose health is often maintained by symbiotic microalgae and other microorganisms, yet they are highly susceptible to environmental-related disturbances. Here, we used a known disruptor, antibiotics, to understand how the coral mucus microbial community reassembles itself following disturbance. We show that the Astrangia poculata microbiome can recover from this disturbance and that individuals with algal symbionts reestablish their microbiomes in a more consistent manner compared to corals lacking symbionts. This work is important because it suggests that this coral may be able to recover its mucus microbiome following disturbance, it identifies specific microbes that may be important to reassembly, and it demonstrates that algal symbionts may play a previously undocumented role in microbial recovery and resilience to environmental change.

Beschreibung: Funding from a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant (NSF REU OCE-1659463) to WHOI supported S.B.’s time at WHOI as a Summer Student Fellow. A Dalio Explore Award and NSF OCE-1736288 to A.A. and NSF OCE-1355720 to C.M.H. further supported this work. K.S. was supported in part by the INBRE-NIGMS of the NIH grant P20GM103430.