Project description:Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are ubiquitously distributed across various biospheres and play key roles in global sulfur and carbon cycles. However, few deep-sea SRB have been cultivated and studied in situ, limiting our understanding of the true metabolism of SRB in the deep biosphere. Here, we firstly clarified the high abundance of SRB in deep-sea sediments via the operational taxonomic units (OTU) sequencing analysis. We have successfully isolated a sulfate-reducing bacterium (strain zrk46) from a cold seep sediment, by using an enriched medium supplemented with sulfate. Our genomic, physiological and phylogenetic analyses indicate that strain zrk46 is a novel species, which we propose be named: Pseudodesulfovibrio serpens. Based on the combined results from growth assays and proteomic analyses, we found that supplementation with sulfate (SO42-), thiosulfate (S2O32-), or sulfite (SO32-) promoted the growth of strain zrk46 by facilitating energy production through the dissimilatory sulfate reduction with the auxiliary functions of heterodisulfide reductases, ferredoxins, and nitrate reduction associated proteins, which were coupled to the oxidation of environmental organic matter in both laboratory and deep-sea in situ conditions. Moreover, metatranscriptomic results have also confirmed the dissimilatory sulfate reduction of deep-sea SRB in in situ environment, which might be coupled to the methane oxidation of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME-2). Overall, these findings expand our understanding of deep-sea SRB, while highlighting their importance for deep-sea sulfur and carbon cycles.
Project description:Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are terminal members of any anaerobic food chain. For example, they critically influence the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and metals (natural environment) as well as the corrosion of civil infrastructure (built environment). The United States alone spends nearly $4 billion to address the biocorrosion challenges of SRB. It is important to analyze the genetic mechanisms of these organisms under environmental stresses. The current study uses transcriptome-wide marker gene panel mapping to decipher the stress mechanisms in SRB. This project contains 3 control samples and 6 test samples of RNA-seq data of Oleidesulfovibrio alaskensis strain G20, exposed to pristine copper and graphene-coated copper.
Project description:Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) colonize the guts of ~50% of humans. We used genome-wide transposon mutagenesis and insertion-site sequencing (INSeq), RNA-Seq, plus mass spectrometry to characterize genetic and environmental factors that impact the niche of Desulfovibrio piger, the most common SRB in a surveyed cohort of healthy USA adults. Gnotobiotic mice were colonized with an assemblage of sequenced human gut bacterial species with or without D. piger and fed diets with different levels and types of carbohydrates and sulfur sources. Diet was a major determinant of functions expressed by this artificial 9-member community and of the genes that impact D. piger fitness; the latter includes high- and low-affinity systems for utilizing ammonia, a limiting resource for D. piger in mice consuming a polysaccharide-rich diet. While genes involved in hydrogen consumption and sulfate reduction are necessary for its colonization, varying dietary free sulfate levels did not significantly alter levels of D. piger, which can obtain sulfate from the host in part via cross-feeding mediated by Bacteroides-encoded sulfatases. Chondroitin sulfate, a common dietary supplement, increased D. piger and H2S levels without compromising gut barrier integrity. A chondroitin sulfate-supplemented diet together with D. piger impacted the assemblage’s substrate utilization preferences, allowing consumption of more reduced carbon sources, and increasing the abundance of the H2-producing Actinobacterium, Collinsella aerofaciens. Our findings provide genetic and metabolic details of how this H2-consuming SRB shapes the responses of a microbiota to diet ingredients, and a framework for examining how individuals lacking D. piger differ from those that harbor it.
Project description:We microdissected each embryo region from 6-micron paraffin sections using the Leica AS LMD system to identify all genes active in different embryo region of an SRB seed containing globular-stage embryos. Keywords: cell type comparison