Publication Date:
2012-05-19
Description:
Microbial communities can subsist at depth in marine sediments without fresh supply of organic matter for millions of years. At threshold sedimentation rates of 1 millimeter per 1000 years, the low rates of microbial community metabolism in the North Pacific Gyre allow sediments to remain oxygenated tens of meters below the sea floor. We found that the oxygen respiration rates dropped from 10 micromoles of O(2) liter(-1) year(-1) near the sediment-water interface to 0.001 micromoles of O(2) liter(-1) year(-1) at 30-meter depth within 86 million-year-old sediment. The cell-specific respiration rate decreased with depth but stabilized at around 10(-3) femtomoles of O(2) cell(-1) day(-1) 10 meters below the seafloor. This result indicated that the community size is controlled by the rate of carbon oxidation and thereby by the low available energy flux.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Roy, Hans -- Kallmeyer, Jens -- Adhikari, Rishi Ram -- Pockalny, Robert -- Jorgensen, Bo Barker -- D'Hondt, Steven -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 May 18;336(6083):922-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1219424.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Center for Geomicrobiology, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 116, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. hans.roy@biology.au.dk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22605778" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Aerobiosis
;
Aluminum Silicates
;
Bacteria/*metabolism
;
Bacterial Load
;
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena
;
Carbon/analysis/metabolism
;
Computer Simulation
;
*Ecosystem
;
Energy Metabolism
;
Geologic Sediments/*chemistry/*microbiology
;
Oxidation-Reduction
;
Oxygen/*analysis
;
*Oxygen Consumption
;
Pacific Ocean
;
Prokaryotic Cells/*metabolism/physiology
;
Seawater/chemistry/microbiology
;
Time
;
Water Movements
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
