Hopanoid-producing bacteria in the Red Sea include the major marine nitrite-oxidizers
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division
Date
2018-04-12Online Publication Date
2018-04-12Print Publication Date
2018-06-01Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/627565
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Hopanoids, including the extended side chain-containing bacteriohopanepolyols (BHPs), are bacterial lipids found abundantly in the geological record and across Earth's surface environments. However, the physiological roles of this biomarker remain uncertain, limiting interpretation of their presence in current and past environments. Recent work investigating the diversity and distribution of hopanoid producers in the marine environment implicated low-oxygen regions as important loci of hopanoid production, and data from marine oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) suggested that the dominant hopanoid producers in these environments are nitrite-utilizing organisms, revealing a potential connection between hopanoid production and the marine nitrogen cycle. Here we use metagenomic data from the Red Sea to investigate the ecology of hopanoid producers in an environmental setting that is biogeochemically distinct from those investigated previously. The distributions of hopanoid production and nitrite oxidation genes in the Red Sea are closely correlated, and the majority of hopanoid producers are taxonomically affiliated with the major marine nitrite oxidizers, Nitrospinae and Nitrospirae. These results suggest that the relationship between hopanoid production and nitrite oxidation is conserved across varying biogeochemical conditions in dark ocean microbial ecosystems.Citation
Kharbush JJ, Thompson LR, Haroon MF, Knight R, Aluwihare LI (2018) Hopanoid-producing bacteria in the Red Sea include the major marine nitrite-oxidizers. FEMS Microbiology Ecology. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiy063.Sponsors
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (awarded to JJK). In addition, the KAUST Red Sea Expedition 2011 was funded by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). We thank the participants of the KAUST Red Sea Expedition 2011, including the P.I. Dr. Ulrich Stingl (currently at University of Florida) and those who helped to generate the data. We also thank Dr. Peter Girguis (Harvard University) for supporting MFH during the preparation of this manuscript.Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)Journal
FEMS Microbiology EcologyPubMed ID
29668882ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/femsec/fiy063
Scopus Count
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