ALBERT

Description: Ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms are an important source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) in aquatic environments. Identifying the impact of pH on N2O production by ammonia oxidizers is key to understanding how aquatic greenhouse gas fluxes will respond to naturally occurring pH changes, as well as acidification driven by anthropogenic CO2. We assessed N2O production rates and formation mechanisms by communities of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA) in a lake and a marine environment, using incubation-based nitrogen (N) stable isotope tracer methods with 15N-labeled ammonium (15NH4+) and nitrite (15NO2-), and also measurements of the natural abundance N and O isotopic composition of dissolved N2O. N2O production during incubations of water from the shallow hypolimnion of Lake Lugano (Switzerland) was significantly higher when the pH was reduced from 7.54 (untreated pH) to 7.20 (reduced pH), while ammonia oxidation rates were similar between treatments. In all incubations, added NH4+ was the source of most of the N incorporated into N2O, suggesting that the main N2O production pathway involved hydroxylamine (NH2OH) and/or NO2- produced by ammonia oxidation during the incubation period. A small but significant amount of N derived from exogenous/added 15NO2- was also incorporated into N2O, but only during the reduced-pH incubations. Mass spectra of this N2O revealed that NH4+ and 15NO2- each contributed N equally to N2O by a "hybrid-N2O" mechanism consistent with a reaction between NH2OH and NO2-, or compounds derived from these two molecules. Nitrifier denitrification was not an important source of N2O. Isotopomeric N2O analyses in Lake Lugano were consistent with incubation results, as 15N enrichment of the internal N vs. external N atoms produced site preferences (25.0-34.4%) consistent with NH2OH-dependent hybrid-N2O production. Hybrid-N2O formation was also observed during incubations of seawater from coastal Namibia with 15NH4+ and NO2-. However, the site preference of dissolved N2O here was low (4.9%), indicating that another mechanism, not captured during the incubations, was important. Multiplex sequencing of 16S rRNA revealed distinct ammonia oxidizer communities: AOB dominated numerically in Lake Lugano, and AOA dominated in the seawater. Potential for hybrid N2O formation exists among both communities, and at least in AOB-dominated environments, acidification may accelerate this mechanism.

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Visser, A., Wankel, S. D., Niklaus, P. A., Byrne, J. M., Kappler, A. A., & Lehmann, M. F. Impact of reactive surfaces on the abiotic reaction between nitrite and ferrous iron and associated nitrogen and oxygen isotope dynamics. Biogeosciences, 17(16), (2020): 4355-4374, doi:10.5194/bg-17-4355-2020.

Description: Anaerobic nitrate-dependent Fe(II) oxidation (NDFeO) is widespread in various aquatic environments and plays a major role in iron and nitrogen redox dynamics. However, evidence for truly enzymatic, autotrophic NDFeO remains limited, with alternative explanations involving the coupling of heterotrophic denitrification with the abiotic oxidation of structurally bound or aqueous Fe(II) by reactive intermediate nitrogen (N) species (chemodenitrification). The extent to which chemodenitrification is caused (or enhanced) by ex vivo surface catalytic effects has not been directly tested to date. To determine whether the presence of either an Fe(II)-bearing mineral or dead biomass (DB) catalyses chemodenitrification, two different sets of anoxic batch experiments were conducted: 2 mM Fe(II) was added to a low-phosphate medium, resulting in the precipitation of vivianite (Fe3(PO4)2), to which 2 mM nitrite (NO−2) was later added, with or without an autoclaved cell suspension (∼1.96×108 cells mL−1) of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. Concentrations of nitrite (NO−2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and iron (Fe2+, Fetot) were monitored over time in both set-ups to assess the impact of Fe(II) minerals and/or DB as catalysts of chemodenitrification. In addition, the natural-abundance isotope ratios of NO−2 and N2O (δ15N and δ18O) were analysed to constrain the associated isotope effects. Up to 90 % of the Fe(II) was oxidized in the presence of DB, whereas only ∼65 % of the Fe(II) was oxidized under mineral-only conditions, suggesting an overall lower reactivity of the mineral-only set-up. Similarly, the average NO−2 reduction rate in the mineral-only experiments (0.004±0.003 mmol L−1 d−1) was much lower than in the experiments with both mineral and DB (0.053±0.013 mmol L−1 d−1), as was N2O production (204.02±60.29 nmol L−1 d−1). The N2O yield per mole NO−2 reduced was higher in the mineral-only set-ups (4 %) than in the experiments with DB (1 %), suggesting the catalysis-dependent differential formation of NO. N-NO−2 isotope ratio measurements indicated a clear difference between both experimental conditions: in contrast to the marked 15N isotope enrichment during active NO−2 reduction (15εNO2=+10.3 ‰) observed in the presence of DB, NO−2 loss in the mineral-only experiments exhibited only a small N isotope effect (〈+1 ‰). The NO−2-O isotope effect was very low in both set-ups (18εNO2 〈1 ‰), which was most likely due to substantial O isotope exchange with ambient water. Moreover, under low-turnover conditions (i.e. in the mineral-only experiments as well as initially in experiments with DB), the observed NO−2 isotope systematics suggest, transiently, a small inverse isotope effect (i.e. decreasing NO−2 δ15N and δ18O with decreasing concentrations), which was possibly related to transitory surface complexation mechanisms. Site preference (SP) of the 15N isotopes in the linear N2O molecule for both set-ups ranged between 0 ‰ and 14 ‰, which was notably lower than the values previously reported for chemodenitrification. Our results imply that chemodenitrification is dependent on the available reactive surfaces and that the NO−2 (rather than the N2O) isotope signatures may be useful for distinguishing between chemodenitrification catalysed by minerals, chemodenitrification catalysed by dead microbial biomass, and possibly true enzymatic NDFeO.

Description: This research has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; grant no. GRK 1708, “Molecular principles of bacterial survival strategies”) and the University of Basel, Switzerland.