Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 9, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-53950-4
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- Korea Institute of Marine Science and Technology Promotion (KIMST) [20160247, KOPRI-PM18050]
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
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Several mud volcanoes are active in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. In this study, we investigated vertical variations in methanotrophic communities in sediments of the mud volcano MV420 (420 m water depth) by analyzing geochemical properties, microbial lipids, and nucleic acid signatures. Three push cores were collected with a remotely operated vehicle from visually discriminative habitats that were devoid of megafauna and/microbial mats (DM) to the naked eye, covered with bacterial mats (BM), or colonized by siboglinid tubeworms (ST). All MV420 sites showed the presence of aerobic methane oxidation (MOx)- and anaerobic methane oxidation (AOM)-related lipid biomarkers (4 alpha-methyl sterols and sn-2-hydroxyarchaeol, respectively), which were distinctly different in comparison with a reference site at which these compounds were not detected. Lipid biomarker results were in close agreement with 16S rRNA analyses, which revealed the presence of MOx-related bacteria (Methylococcales) and AOM-related archaea (ANME-2 and ANME-3) at the MV420 sites. 4 alpha-methyl sterols derived from Methylococcales predominated in the surface layer at the BM site, which showed a moderate methane flux (0.04 mmol cm(-2)y(-1)), while their occurrence was limited at the DM (0.06 mmol cm(-2)y(-1)) and ST (0.01 mmol cm(-2)y(-1)) sites. On the other hand, C-13-depleted sn-2-hydroxyarchaeol potentially derived from ANME-2 and/or ANME-3 was abundant in down-core sediments at the ST site. Our study indicates that a niche diversification within this mud volcano system has shaped distinct methanotrophic communities due to availability of electron acceptors in association with varying degrees of methane flux and bioirrigation activity.
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