Abstract
Much remains unknown about what drives microbial community structure and diversity. Highly structured environments might offer clues. For example, it may be possible to identify metabolically similar species as groups of organisms that correlate spatially with the geochemical processes they carry out. Here, we use a 16S ribosomal RNA gene survey in a lake that has chemical gradients across its depth to identify groups of spatially correlated but phylogenetically diverse organisms. Some groups had distributions across depth that aligned with the distributions of metabolic processes predicted by a biogeochemical model, suggesting that these groups performed biogeochemical functions. A single-cell genetic assay showed, however, that the groups associated with one biogeochemical process, sulfate reduction, contained only a few organisms that have the genes required to reduce sulfate. These results raise the possibility that some of these spatially correlated groups are consortia of phylogenetically diverse and metabolically different microbes that cooperate to carry out geochemical functions.
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Acknowledgements
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (grant no. 1122374) and by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (award no. DE-SC0008743).
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S.P.P., S.W.O., H.H. and E.J.A. designed the research. S.P.P., S.W.O., A.M., C.V., M.B. and S.J.S. performed the research. S.P.P., S.W.O., J.F. and J.R. contributed analytical tools. S.P.P., S.W.O. and J.R. analysed the data. S.P.P., S.W.O. and E.J.A. wrote the paper.
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Preheim, S., Olesen, S., Spencer, S. et al. Surveys, simulation and single-cell assays relate function and phylogeny in a lake ecosystem. Nat Microbiol 1, 16130 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.130
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.130
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