Tracking the degradation of fresh particulate organic matter in permeable riverbed sediments

ABSTRACT: This project builds upon a DOE Subsurface Biogeochemical Research (SBR) project on the transport and metabolism of fresh, photosynthetically-derived (mainly periphyton) particulate organic matter (POM) in near-surface riverbed sediments at the PNNL SFA Hanford 300 Area study site. We propose to utilize a combination of Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) and polar metabolomics, together with metagenomic/transcriptomic sequencing to track, in a substrate-explicit manner, the degradation of fresh POM in Hanford 300 Area riverbed sediments. The overarching hypothesis behind our proposed research is that there will be detectable chemical and (meta)genomic responses to the input of fresh POM. Many previous studies have demonstrated distinct metabolic and bulk geochemical responses to fresh POM input, and a few studies have directly examined the uptake and degradation of POM in permeable marine sediments. In addition, our recent studies at the Hanford 300 Area indicate that in situ input of fresh POM (likely dominated by periphyton detritus) to the near-surface riverbed is an important driver of both microbial community composition and activity in the vicinity of the Hanford 300 Area. This research was performed under the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program (proposal:https://doi.org/10.46936/fics.proj.2021.60033/60000394) and used resources at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (https://ror.org/04xm1d337) and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (https://ror.org/04rc0xn13), which are DOE Office of Science User Facilities operated under Contract Nos. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (JGI) and DE-AC05-76RL01830 (EMSL).

INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive

ORGANISM(S): Riverbed Sediments

SUBMITTER: Eric Roden  

PROVIDER: MSV000097722 | MassIVE | Thu Apr 24 13:49:00 BST 2025

REPOSITORIES: MassIVE