Diversity of rare and abundant prokaryotic phylotypes in the Prony hydrothermal field and comparison with other serpentinite-hosted ecosystems Eléonore Frouin, Méline Bes, Bernard Ollivier, Marianne Quéméneur, Anne Postec, Didier Debroas, Fabrice Armougom, Gaël Erauso To cite this version: Eléonore Frouin, Méline Bes, Bernard Ollivier, Marianne Quéméneur, Anne Postec, et al.. Diver- sity of rare and abundant prokaryotic phylotypes in the Prony hydrothermal field and compari- son with other serpentinite-hosted ecosystems. Frontiers in Microbiology, Frontiers Media, 2018, 9, 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00102. hal-01734508 HAL Id: hal-01734508 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01734508 Submitted on 12 Oct 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License fmicb-09-00102 February 3, 2018 Time: 13:27 # 1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 06 February 2018 doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00102 Diversity of Rare and Abundant Prokaryotic Phylotypes in the Prony Hydrothermal Field and Comparison with Other Serpentinite-Hosted Ecosystems Eléonore Frouin1, Méline Bes1, Bernard Ollivier1, Marianne Quéméneur1, Anne Postec1, Didier Debroas2, Fabrice Armougom1 and Gaël Erauso1* 1 Aix-Marseille Univ, Université de Toulon, CNRS, IRD, MIO UM 110, Marseille, France, 2 CNRS UMR 6023, Laboratoire “Microorganismes – Génome et Environnement”, Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France The Bay of Prony, South of New Caledonia, represents a unique serpentinite- hosted hydrothermal field due to its coastal situation. It harbors both submarine and Edited by: intertidal active sites, discharging hydrogen- and methane-rich alkaline fluids of low Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Portland State University, salinity and mild temperature through porous carbonate edifices. In this study, we United States have extensively investigated the bacterial and archaeal communities inhabiting the Reviewed by: hydrothermal chimneys from one intertidal and three submarine sites by 16S rRNA Donnabella Castillo Lacap-Bugler, gene amplicon sequencing. We show that the bacterial community of the intertidal Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand site is clearly distinct from that of the submarine sites with species distribution William Brazelton, patterns driven by only a few abundant populations, affiliated to the Chloroflexi and East Carolina University, United States Proteobacteria phyla. In contrast, the distribution of archaeal taxa seems less site- *Correspondence: Gaël Erauso dependent, as exemplified by the co-occurrence, in both submarine and intertidal [email protected] sites, of two dominant phylotypes of Methanosarcinales previously thought to be restricted to serpentinizing systems, either marine (Lost City Hydrothermal Field) or Specialty section: This article was submitted to terrestrial (The Cedars ultrabasic springs). Over 70% of the phylotypes were rare Extreme Microbiology, and included, among others, all those affiliated to candidate divisions. We finally a section of the journal compared the distribution of bacterial and archaeal phylotypes of Prony Hydrothermal Frontiers in Microbiology Field with those of five previously studied serpentinizing systems of geographically Received: 12 October 2017 Accepted: 17 January 2018 distant sites. Although sensu stricto no core microbial community was identified, a Published: 06 February 2018 few uncultivated lineages, notably within the archaeal order Methanosarcinales and Citation: the bacterial class Dehalococcoidia (the candidate division MSBL5) were exclusively Frouin E, Bes M, Ollivier B, Quéméneur M, Postec A, found in a few serpentinizing systems while other operational taxonomic units belonging Debroas D, Armougom F and to the orders Clostridiales, Thermoanaerobacterales, or the genus Hydrogenophaga, Erauso G (2018) Diversity of Rare were abundantly distributed in several sites. These lineages may represent taxonomic and Abundant Prokaryotic Phylotypes in the Prony Hydrothermal Field signatures of serpentinizing ecosystems. These findings extend our current knowledge and Comparison with Other of the microbial diversity inhabiting serpentinizing systems and their biogeography. Serpentinite-Hosted Ecosystems. Front. Microbiol. 9:102. Keywords: microbial communities, prony, shallow hydrothermal field, alkaliphiles, methanosarcinales, doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00102 serpentinization Frontiers in Microbiology| www.frontiersin.org 1 February 2018| Volume 9| Article 102 fmicb-09-00102 February 3, 2018 Time: 13:27 # 2 Frouin et al. Rare Biosphere of Prony Hydrothermal Field INTRODUCTION by Methanosarcinales with phylotypes similar to those of the Lost-City Methanosarcinales (LCMS) and The Cedars Serpentinization is the alteration process that abiotically Methanosarcinales (TCMS). While previous studies in PHF transforms olivine and pyroxene-rich rocks into serpentinites have identified the most abundant phylotypes, a substantial and yields alkaline hot fluids enriched in H2 and CH4 (Chavagnac part of the indigenous microbial diversity was assumed to et al., 2013). Active serpentinization generates physico-chemical remain missing from the 16S rRNA genes inventories, due to conditions that might have prevailed in early Earth and could the low-coverage sequencing (Quéméneur et al., 2014; Postec have been fundamental with regard to the origin of life (Russell et al., 2015). Indeed, the coverage of the clone libraries was et al., 2010; Schrenk et al., 2013). Several serpentinizing systems, low, especially for the bacteria, with values ranging from particularly terrestrial ones, have recently been studied by 54 to 79%. Since such approaches underestimate the true molecular approaches using next generation sequencing, to reveal biodiversity of environments (Curtis and Sloan, 2005), higher the indigenous microbial community. They included the Cabeço resolution techniques such as deep sequencing are therefore de Vide Aquifer (CVA, Portugal) (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2013) required in order to recover the overall microbial diversity of and the ophiolites of Tablelands (Canada) (Brazelton et al., PHF. A preliminary study was performed with next-generation 2013), Santa Elena (Costa Rica) (Sánchez-Murillo et al., 2014; sequencing in PHF sites, but was only focused on the diversity of Crespo-Medina et al., 2017), Zambales (Philippines) (Woycheese potentially hydrogen-producing bacteria and their hydrogenases et al., 2015), Samail (Oman) (Rempfert et al., 2017), Chimaera (Mei et al., 2016). (Turkey) (Neubeck et al., 2017), Voltri (Italy) (Quéméneur In this study, we performed 454 pyrosequencing of the et al., 2015; Brazelton et al., 2016), The Cedars (Placer, CA, V1–V3 regions of the prokaryotic 16S rRNA gene in order to United States) (Suzuki et al., 2017) and the nearby site of Coast investigate the composition and the diversity of the microbial Range Ophiolite Microbial Observatory (CROMO, Burbank, biosphere inhabiting carbonate chimneys of four sampling sites CA, United States) (Twing et al., 2017). In contrast, only of the PHF. We showed that the diversity of bacteria (but not a few submarine serpentinizing fields have been investigated archaea) was site-specific and that the overall PHF biosphere using high-throughput sequencing. Their sampling is indeed was dominated by rare prokaryotic phylotypes. Finally, using complicated due to their remote geographic location and great publicly available sequences of 16S rRNA genes, we reported the depths. Among them, the emblematic Lost-City hydrothermal co-occurrence of bacterial and archaeal operational taxonomic field (LCHF) was the only serpentinizing ecosystem to be units (OTUs) identified in PHF and in other serpentinizing subjected to microbiological study targeting the rare biosphere systems. (Brazelton et al., 2010). The recently described Prony Hydrothermal Field (PHF) (Pelletier et al., 2006; Monnin et al., 2014; Quéméneur et al., MATERIALS AND METHODS 2014; Postec et al., 2015) is a shallow (50 m maximum depth) marine alkaline hydrothermal system, located in the Sample Collection Bay of Prony, South of New Caledonia. The run-off waters Description of the sampling sites, sample processing and storage, from the rocky hills surrounding the Bay percolate through and physico-chemical characteristics of PHF have been reported the densely fractured peridotite basement. The resulting end- previously (Monnin et al., 2014; Quéméneur et al., 2014; Postec member fluids discharge into the lagoon and, upon mixing et al., 2015). Briefly, four active carbonate chimneys were sampled with ambient seawater, precipitate, forming large carbonate at four distinct sites of the Bay of Prony, including the “Bain edifices resembling Lost-City chimneys (Monnin et al., 2014). des Japonais” (BdJ), the sites (ST) ST07 (also called “Aiguille de Similarly, to those of Lost-City, PHF fluids are characterized by Prony”), ST09 and ST12. The BdJ site is located on the foreshore high pH values (between 9.0 and 11.5) and elevated N2,H2, of the Carenage Bay and