Anoxic Carbon Flux in Photosynthetic Microbial Mats As Revealed by Metatranscriptomics

Overview

Journal ISME J

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialties Environmental Health
Microbiology

Date 2012 Nov 30

PMID 23190731

Citations 29

Authors

Luke C Burow

Dagmar Woebken

Ian P G Marshall

Erika A Lindquist

Brad M Bebout

Leslie Prufert-Bebout

Tori M Hoehler

Susannah G Tringe

Jennifer Pett-Ridge

Peter K Weber

Alfred M Spormann

Steven W Singer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Photosynthetic microbial mats possess extraordinary phylogenetic and functional diversity that makes linking specific pathways with individual microbial populations a daunting task. Close metabolic and spatial relationships between Cyanobacteria and Chloroflexi have previously been observed in diverse microbial mats. Here, we report that an expressed metabolic pathway for the anoxic catabolism of photosynthate involving Cyanobacteria and Chloroflexi in microbial mats can be reconstructed through metatranscriptomic sequencing of mats collected at Elkhorn Slough, Monterey Bay, CA, USA. In this reconstruction, Microcoleus spp., the most abundant cyanobacterial group in the mats, ferment photosynthate to organic acids, CO2 and H2 through multiple pathways, and an uncultivated lineage of the Chloroflexi take up these organic acids to store carbon as polyhydroxyalkanoates. The metabolic reconstruction is consistent with metabolite measurements and single cell microbial imaging with fluorescence in situ hybridization and NanoSIMS.

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