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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Extreme Microbiology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1491488
This article is part of the Research Topic Rising Stars in Geomicrobiology: Microbial Life in Subsurface, Seep and Hydrothermal Ecosystems View all articles

Complex bacterial diversity of Guaymas Basin hydrothermal sediments revealed by synthetic long-read sequencing (LoopSeq)

Provisionally accepted
John E Hinkle John E Hinkle 1Jeffrey P Chanton Jeffrey P Chanton 2Molly A Moynihan Molly A Moynihan 3,4S. Emil Ruff S. Emil Ruff 3,4Andreas Teske Andreas Teske 1*
  • 1 Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
  • 2 Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, College of Arts and Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, United States
  • 3 Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woodshole, Massachusetts, United States
  • 4 Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Hydrothermal sediments host phylogenetically diverse and physiologically complex microbial communities. Previous studies of microbial community structure in hydrothermal sediments have typically used short-read sequencing approaches. To improve on these approaches, we use LoopSeq, a high-throughput synthetic long-read sequencing method that has yielded promising results in analyses of microbial ecosystems, such as the human gut microbiome. In this study, LoopSeq is used to obtain near-full length (approximately 1400 - 1500 nucleotides) bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences from hydrothermal sediments in Guaymas Basin. Based on these sequences, high-quality alignments and phylogenetic analyses provided new insights into previously unrecognized taxonomic diversity of sulfur-cycling microorganisms and their distribution along a lateral hydrothermal gradient. Detailed phylogenies for free-living and syntrophic sulfur-cycling bacterial lineages identified well-supported monophyletic clusters that have implications for the taxonomic classification of these groups. Particularly, we identify clusters within Candidatus Desulfofervidus that represent unexplored physiological and genomic diversity. In general, LoopSeq-derived 16S rRNA gene sequences aligned consistently with reference sequences in GenBank; however, chimeras were prevalent in sequences as affiliated with the thermophilic Candidatus Desulfofervidus and Thermodesulfobacterium, and in smaller numbers within the sulfur-oxidizing family Beggiatoaceae. Our analysis of sediments along a well-documented thermal and geochemical gradient show how lineages affiliated with different sulfur-cycling taxonomic groups persist throughout surficial hydrothermal sediments in the Guaymas Basin.

    Keywords: LoopSeq, 16S rRNA, sulfur-cycling bacteria, sulfur cycle, Guaymas basin, hydrothermal sediments GUAYMAS BASIN COMPLEX BACTERIAL DIVERSITY 2

    Received: 04 Sep 2024; Accepted: 18 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Hinkle, Chanton, Moynihan, Ruff and Teske. 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.

    * Correspondence: Andreas Teske, Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, 28557, North Carolina, United States

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