Sulfur-cycling chemolithoautotrophic microbial community dominates a cold, anoxic, hypersaline Arctic spring.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Gypsum Hill Spring, located in Nunavut in the Canadian High Arctic, is a rare example of a cold saline spring arising through thick permafrost. It perennially discharges cold (~ 7 °C), hypersaline (7-8% salinity), anoxic (~ 0.04 ppm O₂), and highly reducing (~ - 430 mV) brines rich in sulfate (2.2 g.L^-1) and sulfide (9.5 ppm), making Gypsum Hill an analog to putative sulfate-rich briny habitats on extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars.

Results

Genome-resolved metagenomics and metatranscriptomics were utilized to describe an active microbial community containing novel metagenome-assembled genomes and dominated by sulfur-cycling Desulfobacterota and Gammaproteobacteria. Sulfate reduction was dominated by hydrogen-oxidizing chemolithoautotrophic

SUBMITTER: Magnuson E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10494364 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature