Project description:Methane-generating Archaea drive the final step in anaerobic organic compound mineralization and dictate the carbon flow of Earth’s diverse anaerobic ecosystems. Although such Archaea were presumed to be restricted to life on simple compounds like H2, acetate or methanol, an archaeon, Methermicoccus shengliensis, was recently found to convert methoxylated aromatic compounds to methane. Methoxylated aromatic compounds as component of lignin and coal are present in most subsurface sediments. Despite the significance and novelty of this outstanding archaeon its metabolism has not yet been explored. In this study, transcriptomics and proteomics reveal that M. shengliensis uses a demethoxylation system that is more related to that from acetogenic bacteria than to the methyl transferase system used for methylotrophic methanogenesis. It activates methoxy-groups using tetrahydromethanopterin as the carrier, a mechanism distinct from conventional methanogenic methyl-transfer systems dependent on Coenzyme M.
Project description:Maider J. Echeveste Medrano and colleagues characterized the physiological and metabolic response of freshwater methanotrophic archaea to salt stress. The study performed metaproteomics, gene expression profiles and dedicated metabolomics to identify the pathways involved in the salt stress response and the osmolyte present in anaerobic methanotrophic archaea. Correspondence to Cornelia U. Welte c.welte@science.ru.nl
Project description:Structure probing combined with next-generation sequencing (NGS) has provided novel insights into RNA structure-function relationships. To date such studies have focused largely on bacteria and eukaryotes, with little attention given to the third domain of life, archaea. Furthermore, functional RNAs have not been extensively studied in archaea, leaving open questions about RNA structure and function within this domain of life. With archaeal species being diverse and having many similarities to both bacteria and eukaryotes, the archaea domain has the potential to be an evolutionary bridge. In this study, we introduce a method for probing RNA structure in vivo in the archaea domain of life. We investigated the structure of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) from Methanosarcina acetivorans, a well-studied anaerobic archaeal species, grown with either methanol or acetate. After probing the RNA in vivo with dimethyl sulfate (DMS), Structure-seq2 libraries were generated, sequenced, and analyzed. We mapped the reactivity of DMS onto the secondary structure of the ribosome, which we determined independently with comparative analysis, and confirmed the accuracy of DMS probing in M. acetivorans. Accessibility of the rRNA to DMS in the two carbon sources was found to be quite similar, although some differences were found. Overall, this study establishes the Structure-seq2 pipeline in the archaea domain of life and informs about ribosomal structure within M. acetivorans.