Microbial diversity gradients in the geothermal mud volcano underlying the hypersaline Urania Basin.

ABSTRACT: Mud volcanoes transport deep fluidized sediment and their microbial communities and thus provide a window into the deep biosphere. However, mud volcanoes are commonly sampled at the surface and not probed at greater depths, with the consequence that their internal geochemistry and microbiology remain hidden from view. Urania Basin, a hypersaline seafloor basin in the Mediterranean, harbors a mud volcano that erupts fluidized mud into the brine. The vertical mud pipe was amenable to shipboard Niskin bottle and multicorer sampling and provided an opportunity to investigate the downward sequence of bacterial and archaeal communities of the Urania Basin brine, fluid mud layers and consolidated subsurface sediments using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. These microbial communities show characteristic,

SUBMITTER: Lazar CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9812581 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature