Project description:Zero-valent sulfur (ZVS) distributes widely in the deep-sea cold seep, which is important immediate in the active sulfur cycle of cold seep. In our preview work, a novel ZVS formation pathway discovered in the deep-sea cold weep bacterium Erythrobacter flavus 21-3 was described. However, whether this pathway worked and what function roles it played in the cold seep were unknown. In this study, E. flavus 21-3 was verified to produce zero-valent sulfur in the cold seep using genes soxB and tsdA as our preview report described. Based on proteomic data, stoichiometric methods and microscopic observation, this ZVS formation pathway benefited E. flavus 21-3 in the deep-sea cold seep. Notably, 30% metagenomes contained these two genes in the shallow sediments, which present the most abundant sulfur genes and active sulfur cycle in the cold seep sediments. It suggested that this sulfur formation pathway exist across many bacteria in the cold seep. This strongly indicates that this novel pathway might be frequently used by microbes and plays an important role in the biogeochemical sulfur cycle in cold seep.
Project description:The deep marine subsurface is one of the largest unexplored biospheres on Earth, where members of the phylum Chloroflexi are abundant and globally distributed. However, the deep-sea Chloroflexi have remained elusive to cultivation, hampering a more thorough understanding of their metabolisms. In this work, we have successfully isolated a representative of the phylum Chloroflexi, designated strain ZRK33, from deep-sea cold seep sediments. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA genes, genomes, RpoB and EF-tu proteins indicated that strain ZRK33 represents a novel class within the phylum Chloroflexi, designated Sulfochloroflexia. We present a detailed description of the phenotypic traits, complete genome sequence and central metabolisms of the novel strain ZRK33. Notably, sulfate and thiosulfate could significantly promote the growth of the new isolate, possibly through accelerating the hydrolysis and uptake of saccharides. Thus, this result reveals that strain ZRK33 may play a crucial part in sulfur cycling in the deep-sea environments. Moreover, the putative genes associated with assimilatory and dissimilatory sulfate reduction are broadly distributed in the genomes of 27 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from deep-sea cold seep and hydrothermal vents sediments. Together, we propose that the deep marine subsurface Chloroflexi play key roles in sulfur cycling for the first time. This may concomitantly suggest an unsuspected availability of sulfur-containing compounds to allow for the high abundance of Chloroflexi in the deep sea.
Project description:Sulfur metabolism in the deep-sea cold seep has been mentioned to have an important contribution to the biogeochemical cycle of sulfur in previous studies. And sulfate reducing bacteria have also been considered to be a dominant microbial population in the deep-sea cold seep and play a crucial role in this process. However, most of sulfate reducing bacteria from cold seep still cannot be purely cultured under laboratory conditions, therefore the actual sulfur metabolism pathways in sulfate reducing bacteria from the deep-sea cold seep have remained unclear. Here, we isolate and pure culture a typical sulfate reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio marinus CS1 from the sediment sample of the deep-sea cold seep in the South China Sea, which provides a probability to understand the sulfur metabolism in the cold seep.
