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Stratified Communities of Active Archaea in Shallow Sediments of the Pearl River Estuary, Southern China

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Abstract

Marine subsurface sediments represent a novel archaeal biosphere with unknown physiology. To get to know the composition and ecological roles of the archaeal communities within the sediments of the Pearl River Estuary, Southern China, the diversity and vertical distribution of active archaea in a sediment core were characterized by 16S rRNA phylogenetic analysis of clone libraries derived from RNA. In this study, the archaeal diversity above, within, and beneath the sulfate-methane transition zone (SMTZ) in the Pearl River Estuary sediment core was described. The majority of the clones obtained from the metabolically active fraction of the archaeal community were most closely related to miscellaneous crenarchaeotal group and terrestrial miscellaneous euryarchaeotal group. Notably, although the Pearl River Estuary sediment belong to high methane and high organic carbon environment, sequences affiliated with methanotrophic and methanogenic archaea were detected as minor group in 16S rRNA clone libraries. No obvious evidence suggested that these unknown archaeal phylotypes related directly to anaerobic oxidation of methane in SMTZ. This is the first phylogenetic analysis of the metabolically active fraction of the archaeal community in the coastal sediment environments.

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Acknowledgments

This study has been partly supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 51168046), the National High-Tech Program (2007AA091904), COMRA fund (DYXM-115-02-2-01). Additional supports were provided by grants from the Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, and from the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Engineering and Technology, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Jinquan Chen

  2. State Key Laboratory of Marine Engineering, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, 200240, People’s Republic of China

    Jinquan Chen, Fengping Wang & Xiang Xiao

  3. Key Laboratory of Marine Biogenetic Resources, Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China

    Lijing Jiang & Xijie Yin

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  1. Jinquan Chen
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  2. Fengping Wang
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  3. Lijing Jiang
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  4. Xijie Yin
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Correspondence to Fengping Wang.

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Chen, J., Wang, F., Jiang, L. et al. Stratified Communities of Active Archaea in Shallow Sediments of the Pearl River Estuary, Southern China. Curr Microbiol 67, 41–50 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-013-0320-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-013-0320-y

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