Abstract
Previous studies based on analysis of amoA, 16S ribosomal RNA or accA gene sequences have established that marine Thaumarchaeota fall into two phylogenetically distinct groups corresponding to shallow- and deep-water clades, but it is not clear how water depth interacts with other environmental factors, including light, temperature and location, to affect this pattern of diversification. Earlier studies focused on single-gene distributions were not able to link phylogenetic structure to other aspects of functional adaptation. Here, we analyzed the genome content of 46 uncultivated single Thaumarchaeota cells sampled from epi- and mesopelagic waters of subtropical, temperate and polar oceans. Phylogenomic analysis showed that populations diverged by depth, as expected, and that mesopelagic populations from different locations were well mixed. Functional analysis showed that some traits, including putative DNA photolyase and catalase genes that may be related to adaptive mechanisms to reduce light-induced damage, were found exclusively in members of the epipelagic clade. Our analysis of partial genomes has thus confirmed the depth differentiation of Thaumarchaeota populations observed previously, consistent with the distribution of putative mechanisms to reduce light-induced damage in shallow- and deep-water populations.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center at the University of Georgia for providing computational resources. This research was funded by grants from NSF (OPP 08-38996; OCE-1232982, EF-826924 and OCE-821374) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, with sequencing support from the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute Community Supported Program grants 2010-77 and 2011-387.
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Luo, H., Tolar, B., Swan, B. et al. Single-cell genomics shedding light on marine Thaumarchaeota diversification. ISME J 8, 732–736 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2013.202
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2013.202
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