Abstract
Biological processes on glacier surfaces affect glacier reflectance, influence surface energy budget and glacier response to climate warming, and determine glacier carbon exchange with the atmosphere. Currently, carbon balance of supraglacial environment is assessed as the balance between the activity of oxygenic phototrophs and the respiration rate of heterotrophic organisms. Here we present a metagenomic analysis of tiny wind-blown supraglacial sediment (cryoconite) from Baltoro (Pakistani Karakoram) and Forni (Italian Alps) glaciers, providing evidence for the occurrence in these environments of different and previously neglected metabolic pathways. Indeed, we observed high abundance of heterotrophic anoxygenic phototrophs, suggesting that light might directly supplement the energy demand of some bacterial strains allowing them to use as carbon source organic molecules, which otherwise would be respired. Furthermore, data suggest that CO2 could be produced also by microbiologically mediated oxidation of CO, which may be produced by photodegradation of organic matter.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Parco Tecnologico Padano (Lodi, Italy) for technical assistance and sequencing. We also thank Ev-K2-CNR association for support and logistics during expedition on Baltoro Glacier. This work was partially funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (PRIN grant 2010AYKTAB to CS) and by University of Milano-Bicocca (grant 7-19-2001100-2 to RA). Bioinformatics analyses have been run on PICO server (CINECA, Bologna, Italy; project MEGABIT—grant ID: HP10CLG7F to AF).
Data Accessibility
Sequence data of metagenomes were submitted to European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), study accession number PRJEB12327 (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB12327).
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Franzetti, A., Tagliaferri, I., Gandolfi, I. et al. Light-dependent microbial metabolisms drive carbon fluxes on glacier surfaces. ISME J 10, 2984–2988 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.72
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.72
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