Letter abstract
Nature Geoscience 2, 349 - 354 (2009)
Published online: 6 April 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo475
There is an Erratum (21 May 2009) associated with this Letter.
Subject Categories: Oceanography | Biogeochemistry
Metabolic variability in seafloor brines revealed by carbon and sulphur dynamics
Samantha B. Joye1, Vladimir A. Samarkin1, Beth! N. Orcutt1,6, Ian R. MacDonald2, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs3, Marcus Elvert3, Andreas P. Teske4, Karen G. Lloyd4, Mark A. Lever4,6, Joseph P. Montoya5 & Christof D. Meile1
Brine fluids that upwell from deep, hot reservoirs below the sea bed supply the sea floor with energy-rich substrates and nutrients that are used by diverse microbial ecosystems. Contemporary hypersaline environments formed by brine seeps may provide insights into the metabolism and distribution of microorganisms on the early Earth1 or on extraterrestrial bodies2. Here we use geochemical and genetic analyses to characterize microbial community composition and metabolism in two seafloor brines in the Gulf of Mexico: an active mud volcano and a quiescent brine pool. Both brine environments are anoxic and hypersaline. However, rates of sulphate reduction and acetate production are much higher in the brine pool, whereas the mud volcano supports much higher rates of methane production. We find no evidence of anaerobic oxidation of methane, despite high methane fluxes at both sites. We conclude that the contrasting microbial community compositions and metabolisms are linked to differences in dissolved-organic-matter input from the deep subsurface and different fluid advection rates between the two sites.
- Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-3636, USA
- Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, Texas 78412, USA
- Organic Geochemistry Group, MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences & Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany
- Department of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
- School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA
- Present addresses: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA (B.N.O.); Center for Geomicrobiology, Biology Institute, Ny Munkegade 1540 DK-0800 Århus C, Denmark (M.A.L.)
Correspondence to: Samantha B. Joye1 e-mail: mjoye@uga.edu
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