Drivers of methane-cycling archaeal abundances, community structure, and catabolic pathways in continental margin sediments.

ABSTRACT: Marine sediments contain Earth's largest reservoir of methane, with most of this methane being produced and consumed in situ by methane-cycling archaea. While numerous studies have investigated communities of methane-cycling archaea in hydrocarbon seeps and sulfate-methane transition zones, less is known about how these archaea change from the seafloor downward throughout diffusion-dominated marine sediments. Focusing on four continental margin sites of the North Sea-Baltic Sea transition, we here investigate the in situ drivers of methane-cycling archaeal community structure and metabolism based on geochemical and stable carbon-isotopic gradients, functional gene (mcrA) copy numbers and phylogenetic compositions, and thermodynamic calculations. We observe major change

SUBMITTER: Deng L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11840676 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature