Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Society for Microbiology, 2004. 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 70 (2004): 2551-2555, doi:10.1128/AEM.70.4.2551-2555.2004.
Description:
The chemical stress factors for microbial life at deep-sea hydrothermal vents include high concentrations of heavy metals and sulfide. Three hyperthermophilic vent archaea, the sulfur-reducing heterotrophs Thermococcus fumicolans and Pyrococcus strain GB-D and the chemolithoautotrophic methanogen Methanocaldococcus jannaschii, were tested for survival tolerance to heavy metals (Zn, Co, and Cu) and sulfide. The sulfide addition consistently ameliorated the high toxicity of free metal cations by the formation of dissolved metal-sulfide complexes as well as solid precipitates. Thus, chemical speciation of heavy metals with sulfide allows hydrothermal vent archaea to tolerate otherwise toxic metal concentrations in their natural environment.
Description:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (Life
in Extreme Environments [LExEn] grant OCE-0085534 to A.T.,
S.J.M., K.L, S.B., and C.O.W.), an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in
Microbial Biology (M.S.A.), the MBL (Environmental Genomes, S/C
NCC2-1054) and URI (Subsurface Biospheres) NASA Astrobiology
Institute Teams (A.T. and S.J.M.), an NRC Astrobiology postdoctoral
fellowship (V.P.E.), and a Princeton Harry Hess postdoctoral fellowship
(M.A.S.).
Keywords:
Thermococcus fumicolans
;
Pyrococcus
;
Methanocaldococcus jannaschii
;
Heavy metals
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
1020522 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
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