AEM Accepted Manuscript Posted Online 13 March 2015 Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.00147-15 Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved. 1 Evidence of active methanogen communities in shallow sediments of the Sonora 2 Margin cold seeps 3 4 Adrien Vigneron#1235, Stéphane L'Haridon23, Anne Godfroy123, Erwan G. Roussel1234, Barry A. 5 Cragg4, R. John Parkes4 and Laurent Toffin123 6 1Ifremer, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements Extrêmes, UMR6197, 7 Technopôle Brest Iroise, BP70, Plouzané, France 8 2Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements 9 Extrêmes, UMR6197, Technopôle Brest Iroise, BP70, Plouzané, France 10 3CNRS, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements Extrêmes, UMR6197, Technopôle 11 Brest Iroise, BP70, Plouzané, France 12 4School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, United Kingdom 13 5School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne 14 NE1 7RU, United Kingdom 15 Running Title: Methanogens in the Sonora Margin sediments 16 Keywords: Archaea / methanogenesis / Guaymas Basin / Methanococcoides / 17 Methanogenium 18 Contact of corresponding author: Dr. Adrien Vigneron ;
[email protected] ; tel :+33 19 298 224 396 ; fax +33 298 224 557 20 Abstract 21 In the Sonora Margin cold seep ecosystems (Gulf of California), sediments underlying 22 microbial mats harbor high biogenic methane concentrations, fuelling various microbial 23 communities such as abundant lineages of Anaerobic Methanotrophs (ANME). However 1 24 biodiversity, distribution and metabolism of the microorganisms producing this methane 25 remain poorly understood. In this study, measurements of methanogenesis using 26 radiolabelled dimethylamine, bicarbonate and acetate showed that biogenic methane 27 production in these sediments was mainly dominated by methylotrophic methanogenesis, 28 while the proportion of autotrophic methanogenesis increased with depth.