Metabolic features that select for Bathyarchaeia in modern ferruginous lacustrine subsurface sediments.

ABSTRACT: Ferruginous conditions prevailed through Earth's early oceans history, yet our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in anoxic iron-rich, sulfate-poor sediments remains elusive in terms of redox processes and organic matter remineralization. Using comprehensive geochemistry, cell counts, and metagenomic data, we investigated the taxonomic and functional distribution of the microbial subsurface biosphere in Lake Towuti, a stratified ferruginous analogue. Below the zone in which pore water becomes depleted in electron acceptors, cell densities exponentially decreased while microbial assemblages shifted from iron- and sulfate-reducing bacterial populations to fermentative anaerobes and methanogens, mostly selecting Bathyarchaeia below the sulfate reduction zone. Bathyarchaeia encode metaboli

SUBMITTER: Ruiz-Blas F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11631310 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature