Dataset Information

Geographic Distribution of Archaeal Ammonia Oxidizing Ecotypes in the Atlantic Ocean.

ABSTRACT: In marine ecosystems, Thaumarchaeota are most likely the major ammonia oxidizers. While ammonia concentrations vary by about two orders of magnitude in the oceanic water column, archaeal ammonia oxidizers (AOA) vary by only one order of magnitude from surface to bathypelagic waters. Thus, the question arises whether the key enzyme responsible for ammonia oxidation, ammonia monooxygenase (amo), exhibits different affinities to ammonia along the oceanic water column and consequently, whether there are different ecotypes of AOA present in the oceanic water column. We determined the abundance and phylogeny of AOA based on their amoA gene. Two ecotypes of AOA exhibited a distribution pattern reflecting the reported availability of ammonia and the physico-chemical conditions throughout the Atlantic, and from epi- to bathypelagic waters. The distinction between these two ecotypes was not only detectable at the nucleotide level. Consistent changes were also detected at the amino acid level. These changes include substitutions of polar to hydrophobic amino acid, and glycine substitutions that could have an effect on the configuration of the amo protein and thus, on its activity. Although we cannot identify the specific effect, the ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions (dN/dS) between the two ecotypes indicates a strong positive selection between them. Consequently, our results point to a certain degree of environmental selection on these two ecotypes that have led to their niche specialization.

SUBMITTER: Sintes E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4746290 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Geographic Distribution of Archaeal Ammonia Oxidizing Ecotypes in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sintes Eva E De Corte Daniele D Haberleitner Elisabeth E Herndl Gerhard J GJ

Frontiers in microbiology 20160209

In marine ecosystems, Thaumarchaeota are most likely the major ammonia oxidizers. While ammonia concentrations vary by about two orders of magnitude in the oceanic water column, archaeal ammonia oxidizers (AOA) vary by only one order of magnitude from surface to bathypelagic waters. Thus, the question arises whether the key enzyme responsible for ammonia oxidation, ammonia monooxygenase (amo), exhibits different affinities to ammonia along the oceanic water column and consequently, whether there ...[more]

PMID: 26903961

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Project description:Black soils (Mollisols) of northeast China are highly productive and agriculturally important for food production. Ammonia-oxidizing microbes play an important role in N cycling in the black soils. However, the information related to the composition and distribution of ammonia-oxidizing microbes in the black soils has not yet been addressed. In this study, we used the amoA gene to quantify the abundance and community composition of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) across the black soil zone. The amoA abundance of AOA was remarkably larger than that of AOB, with ratios of AOA/AOB in the range from 3.1 to 91.0 across all soil samples. The abundance of AOA amoA was positively correlated with total soil C content (p < 0.001) but not with soil pH (p > 0.05). In contrast, the abundance of AOB amoA positively correlated with soil pH (p = 0.009) but not with total soil C. Alpha diversity of AOA did not correlate with any soil parameter, however, alpha diversity of AOB was affected by multiple soil factors, such as soil pH, total P, N, and C, available K content, and soil water content. Canonical correspondence analysis indicated that the AOA community was mainly affected by the sampling latitude, followed by soil pH, total P and C; while the AOB community was mainly determined by soil pH, as well as total P, C and N, water content, and sampling latitude, which highlighted that the AOA community was more geographically distributed in the black soil zone of northeast China than AOB community. In addition, the pairwise analyses showed that the potential nitrification rate (PNR) was not correlated with alpha diversity but weakly positively with the abundance of the AOA community (p = 0.048), whereas PNR significantly correlated positively with the richness (p = 0.003), diversity (p = 0.001) and abundance (p < 0.001) of the AOB community, which suggested that AOB community might make a greater contribution to nitrification than AOA community in the black soils when ammonium is readily available.

Dataset Information

Geographic Distribution of Archaeal Ammonia Oxidizing Ecotypes in the Atlantic Ocean.

Publications

Geographic Distribution of Archaeal Ammonia Oxidizing Ecotypes in the Atlantic Ocean.

Similar Datasets

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