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Published June 30, 2017 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Thermoplasmatales and Methanogens: Potential Association with the Crenarchaeol Production in Chinese Soils

Abstract

Crenarchaeol is a unique isoprenoid glycerol dibiphytanyl glycerol tetraether (iGDGT) lipid, which is only identified in cultures of ammonia-oxidizing Thaumarchaeota. However, the taxonomic origins of crenarchaeol have been debated recently. The archaeal populations, other than Thaumarchaeota, may have associations with the production of crenarchaeol in ecosystems characterized by non-thaumarchaeotal microorganisms. To this end, we investigated 47 surface soils from upland and wetland soils and rice fields and another three surface sediments from river banks. The goal was to examine the archaeal community compositions in comparison with patterns of iGDGTs in four fractional forms (intact polar-, core-, monoglycosidic- and diglycosidic-lipid fractions) along gradients of environments. The DistLM analysis identified that Group I.1b Thaumarchaeota were mainly responsible for changes in crenarchaeol in the overall soil samples; however, Thermoplasmatales may also contribute to it. This is further supported by the comparison of crenarchaeol between samples characterized by methanogens, Thermoplasmatales or Group I.1b Thaumarchaeota, which suggests that the former two may contribute to the crenarchaeol pool. Last, when samples containing enhanced abundance of Thermoplasmatales and methanogens were considered, crenarchaeol was observed to correlate positively with Thermoplasmatales and archaeol, respectively. Collectively, our data suggest that the crenarchaeol production is mainly derived from Thaumarchaeota and partly associated with uncultured representatives of Thermoplasmatales and archaeol-producing methanogens in soil environments that may be in favor of their growth. Our finding supports the notion that Thaumarchaeota may not be the sole source of crenarchaeol in the natural environment, which may have implication for the evolution of lipid synthesis among different types of archaea.

Additional Information

© 2017 Li, Zheng, Wang, Liu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Received: 20 January 2017; Accepted: 12 June 2017; Published: 30 June 2017. Author Contributions: FL and CZ designed the work, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript; FL and FZ conducted experiment; all authors contributed to the collection of samples. Funding: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grants #41373072 and #41673073 (CZ)], the Shanghai Bureau of Science and Technology [grant #13JC1405200 (CZ)] and the "National Thousand Talents Program" through the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji University (CZ). FL also obtained financial support from the State Scholarship Fund from China Scholarship Council (No. 201406260129). The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We thank Yingqin Wu, Bangqi Hu, Yuan Gao, Liang Dong, and Joanna Zhang for assistance in field sampling. We also thank the members in State key Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji University, and Minhan Dai and members in State key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, for assistance on extracting and determining soil nutrients. We appreciate David H. Case and Stephanie Connon for assistance in processing 454 pyrosequencing data at California Institute of Technology. The 454-pyrosequencing analysis was conducted in Majorbio company in Shanghai of China and the molecular data was processed in Victoria J. Orphan's lab at Caltech. We appreciate Victoria J. Orphan for providing valuable advice, and Tommy J. Phelps and Alexis Pasulka for reviewing the drafts of this paper and providing helpful suggestions. We also thank Yuanqing Zhu for assistance in the statistical analysis.

Attached Files

Published - fmicb-08-01200.pdf

Supplemental Material - data_sheet_1.docx

Supplemental Material - image_1.tif

Supplemental Material - image_2.tif

Supplemental Material - table_1.docx

Supplemental Material - table_2.docx

Supplemental Material - table_3.docx

Supplemental Material - table_4.docx

Supplemental Material - table_5.docx

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August 19, 2023
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