Abstract
Roseobacter clade bacteria (RCB) are abundant in marine bacterioplankton worldwide and central to pelagic sulfur cycling. Very little is known about their abundance and function in marine sediments. We investigated the abundance, diversity and sulfur oxidation potential of RCB in surface sediments of two tidal flats. Here, RCB accounted for up to 9.6% of all cells and exceeded abundances commonly known for pelagic RCB by 1000-fold as revealed by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA and sulfate thiohydrolase (SoxB) genes indicated diverse, possibly sulfur-oxidizing RCB related to sequences known from bacterioplankton and marine biofilms. To investigate the sulfur oxidation potential of RCB in sediments in more detail, we analyzed a metagenomic fragment from a RCB. This fragment encoded the reverse dissimilatory sulfite reductase (rDSR) pathway, which was not yet found in RCB, a novel type of sulfite dehydrogenase (SoeABC) and the Sox multi-enzyme complex including the SoxCD subunits. This was unexpected as soxCD and dsr genes were presumed to be mutually exclusive in sulfur-oxidizing prokaryotes. This unique gene arrangement would allow a metabolic flexibility beyond known sulfur-oxidizing pathways. We confirmed the presence of dsrA by geneFISH in closely related RCB from an enrichment culture. Our results show that RCB are an integral part of the microbial community in marine sediments, where they possibly oxidize inorganic and organic sulfur compounds in oxic and suboxic sediment layers.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A Krupke, C Probian, J Wulf, S Dyksma, K Bischof and K Zerjatke for excellent technical assistance. We are grateful to thank Felix Jansen, Manuel Kleiner, Juliane Wippler, Petra Pjevac and the MarMic students of class 2014 for providing sediment samples. We acknowledge the captains of ‘Spes Mea’ and ‘Doris von Ochtum’ for supporting the sampling campaigns. This work was funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) during research group ‘Biogeochemistry of Tidal Flats’ (JO 307/4, BO 1584/4) and the Max Planck Society.
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Lenk, S., Moraru, C., Hahnke, S. et al. Roseobacter clade bacteria are abundant in coastal sediments and encode a novel combination of sulfur oxidation genes. ISME J 6, 2178–2187 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2012.66
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2012.66
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