Sulfur cycling and methanogenesis primarily drive microbial colonization of the highly sulfidic Urania deep hypersaline basin.
Sara Borin,Lorenzo Brusetti,Francesca Mapelli,Giuseppe D'Auria,Tullio Brusa,Massimo Marzorati,Aurora Rizzi,Michail M. Yakimov,Danielle Marty,G. J. de Lange,P. Van der Wielen,Henk Bolhuis,Terry J. McGenity,Paraskevi N. Polymenakou,Elisa Malinverno,Laura Giuliano,Cesare Corselli,Daniele Daffonchio +17 more
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The data suggest that the complex microbial community is adapted to the basin's extreme chemistry, and the elevated biomass is driven largely by sulfur cycling and methanogenesis.Abstract:
Urania basin in the deep Mediterranean Sea houses a lake that is >100 m deep, devoid of oxygen, 6 times more saline than seawater, and has very high levels of methane and particularly sulfide (up to 16 mM), making it among the most sulfidic water bodies on Earth. Along the depth profile there are 2 chemoclines, a steep one with the overlying oxic seawater, and another between anoxic brines of different density, where gradients of salinity, electron donors and acceptors occur. To identify and differentiate the microbes and processes contributing to the turnover of organic matter and sulfide along the water column, these chemoclines were sampled at a high resolution. Bacterial cell numbers increased up to a hundredfold in the chemoclines as a consequence of elevated nutrient availability, with higher numbers in the upper interface where redox gradient was steeper. Bacterial and archaeal communities, analyzed by DNA fingerprinting, 16S rRNA gene libraries, activity measurements, and cultivation, were highly stratified and metabolically more active along the chemoclines compared with seawater or the uniformly hypersaline brines. Detailed analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that in both chemoclines δ- and e-Proteobacteria, predominantly sulfate reducers and sulfur oxidizers, respectively, were the dominant bacteria. In the deepest layers of the basin MSBL1, putatively responsible for methanogenesis, dominated among archaea. The data suggest that the complex microbial community is adapted to the basin's extreme chemistry, and the elevated biomass is driven largely by sulfur cycling and methanogenesis.read more
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Thermodynamic limits to microbial life at high salt concentrations.
TL;DR: New data is reviewed, both from field observations and from the characterization of cultures of new types of prokaryotes growing at high salt concentrations, to evaluate to what extent the theories formulated 12 years ago are still valid, need to be refined, or should be refuted.
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Deep-Sea Biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable
Roberto Danovaro,Cinzia Corinaldesi,Gianfranco D'Onghia,Bella S. Galil,Cristina Gambi,Andrew J. Gooday,Nikolaos Lampadariou,Gian Marco Luna,Caterina Morigi,Karine Olu,Paraskevi N. Polymenakou,Eva Ramirez-Llodra,Anna Sabbatini,Francesc Sardà,Myriam Sibuet,Anastasios Tselepides +15 more
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Microbiology of the Red Sea (and other) deep-sea anoxic brine lakes
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Microbial diversity of hypersaline environments: a metagenomic approach.
TL;DR: The current accepted model of community structure in hypersaline environments is that the square archaeon Haloquadratum waslbyi, the bacteroidete Salinibacter ruber and nanohaloarchaea are predominant members at higher salt concentrations, while more diverse archaeal and bacterial taxa are observed in habitats with intermediate salinities.
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Microbial community of the deep-sea brine Lake Kryos seawater–brine interface is active below the chaotropicity limit of life as revealed by recovery of mRNA
Michail M. Yakimov,Violetta La Cono,Gina La Spada,Giovanni Bortoluzzi,Enzo Messina,Francesco Smedile,Erika Arcadi,Mireno Borghini,Manuel Ferrer,Phillippe Schmitt-Kopplin,Norbert Hertkorn,Jonathan A. Cray,John E. Hallsworth,Peter N. Golyshin,Laura Giuliano +14 more
TL;DR: These findings shed light on the plausibility of life in highly chaotropic environments, geochemical windows for microbial extremophiles, and have implications for habitability elsewhere in the Solar System.
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