Fig. 2: Two archaea of the genus Ca. Alkanophaga are abundant in the cultures and closely related to ANME-1.
a, Relative abundances of MAGs obtained from manual binning. Ca. Alkanophaga volatiphilum (MAG 4) is abundant in cultures oxidizing shorter, volatile alkanes between C5-C7; Ca. Alkanophaga liquidiphilum (MAG 1) is abundant in cultures oxidizing liquid alkanes between C8 and C14. A Thermodesulfobacterium with the genomic capacities for dissimilatory sulfate reduction, Ca. Thermodesulfobacterium syntrophicum, is present in all cultures. Taxonomies of background MAGs are displayed at order level. Background archaea are shaded grey; background bacteria are shaded brown. b, Phylogenomic placement of Ca. Alkanophaga MAGs based on the concatenated alignment of 76 archaeal single-copy core genes. Ca. Alkanophaga diverge at the root of ANME-1 (Ca. Methanophagales). The class Syntrophoarchaeia is highlighted with a shaded rectangle. The outgroup consists of members of the Thermoproteota. Tree scale bar, 10% sequence divergence. c–f, Double hybridization of C6 (c,d) and C14 (e,f) culture samples with a specific probe targeting the Ca. Alkanophagales clade (Aph183, red) and a general bacterial probe (EUBI-III, cyan). Ca. Alkanophaga cells are abundant in the aggregates where they co-occur with bacterial cells. Scale bar, 10 µm.
