Microbial Diversity Under Extreme Euxinia: Mahoney Lake, Canada V
Geobiology (2012), 10, 223–235 DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4669.2012.00317.x Microbial diversity under extreme euxinia: Mahoney Lake, Canada V. KLEPAC-CERAJ,1,2 C. A. HAYES,3 W. P. GILHOOLY,4 T. W. LYONS,5 R. KOLTER2 AND A. PEARSON3 1Department of Molecular Genetics, Forsyth Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA 2Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 3Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 4Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO, USA 5Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA ABSTRACT Mahoney Lake, British Columbia, Canada, is a stratified, 15-m deep saline lake with a euxinic (anoxic, sulfidic) hypolimnion. A dense plate of phototrophic purple sulfur bacteria is found at the chemocline, but to date the rest of the Mahoney Lake microbial ecosystem has been underexamined. In particular, the microbial community that resides in the aphotic hypolimnion and ⁄ or in the lake sediments is unknown, and it is unclear whether the sulfate reducers that supply sulfide for phototrophy live only within, or also below, the plate. Here we profiled distribu- tions of 16S rRNA genes using gene clone libraries and PhyloChip microarrays. Both approaches suggest that microbial diversity is greatest in the hypolimnion (8 m) and sediments. Diversity is lowest in the photosynthetic plate (7 m). Shallower depths (5 m, 7 m) are rich in Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteo- bacteria, while deeper depths (8 m, sediments) are rich in Crenarchaeota, Natronoanaerobium, and Verrucomi- crobia. The heterogeneous distribution of Deltaproteobacteria and Epsilonproteobacteria between 7 and 8 m is consistent with metabolisms involving sulfur intermediates in the chemocline, but complete sulfate reduction in the hypolimnion.
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