bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/556704; this version posted December 6, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Opportunistic interactions on Fe0 between methanogens and acetogens 2 from a climate lake 3 Paola Andrea Palacios 1 and Amelia-Elena Rotaru1* 4 1Nordcee, Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark 5 * Correspondence: 6 Amelia-Elena Rotaru 7
[email protected] 8 Keywords: microbial influenced corrosion, acetogens, methanogens, interspecies interactions, 9 iron corrosion, Clostridium, Methanosarcinales, Methanothermobacter. 10 Abstract 11 Microbial-induced corrosion has been extensively studied in pure cultures. However, Fe0 corrosion 12 by complex environmental communities, and especially the interplay between microbial 13 physiological groups, is still poorly understood. In this study, we combined experimental physiology 14 and metagenomics to explore Fe0-dependent microbial interactions between physiological groups 15 enriched from anoxic climate lake sediments. Then, we investigated how each physiological group 16 interacts with Fe0. We offer evidence for a new interspecies interaction during Fe0 corrosion. We 17 showed that acetogens enhanced methanogenesis but were negatively impacted by methanogens 18 (opportunistic microbial interaction). Methanogens were positively impacted by acetogens. In the 19 metagenome of the corrosive community, the acetogens were mostly represented by Clostridium and 20 Eubacterium, the methanogens by 21 Methanosarcinales, Methanothermobacter and Methanobrevibacter. Within the corrosive 22 community, acetogens and methanogens produced acetate and methane concurrently, however at 0 23 rates that cannot be explained by abiotic H2-buildup at the Fe surface.