Distinct microbial communities thriving in gas hydrate-associated sediments from the eastern Japan Sea

Marine gas hydrate and cold-seep systems, which maintain a large amount of methane in the seabed, may critically impact the geochemical and ecological characteristics of the deep-sea sedimentary environment. However, it remains unclear whether marine sediments associated with gas hydrate harbor novel microbial communities that are distinct from those from typical marine sediments. In this study, microbial community structures thriving in sediments associated with and without gas hydrate in the eastern Japan Sea were characterized by 16S rRNA gene-based phylogenetic analyses. Uncultivated bacterial lineages of candidate division JS1 and a novel group NT-B2 were dominant in the sediments from gas hydrate-associated sites. Whereas, microbial populations from sites not associated with gas hydrate were mainly composed of Bacteroidetes, Nitrospirales, Chlamydiales, Chlorobiales, and yet-uncultured bacterial lineages of OD1 and TM06. The good correlation between the dominance of JS1 and NT-B2 and the association of gas hydrate could be attributed to the supply of more energetically favorable energy sources in gas-rich fluids from the deep subsurface than refractory organic matter of terrigenous and diatomaceous origin.     

Diagenesis of organic matter in a 400 m organic rich sediment core from offshore Namibia using solid state 13C NMR and FTIR

Although rates and mechanisms of early diagenesis have been well studied, the effects of microbial metabolism on the molecular composition of the sedimentary organic matter (SOM) over long periods of time need more investigation. In this study, we characterize the early diagenesis of marine SOM from organic rich sediments of the Ocean Drilling Program site 1082 located off Namibia, in the vicinity of the Benguela coastal upwelling system. We used both Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹³C NMR) to assess the quantitative partitioning of the organic carbon into major compound classes (aliphatic, aromatic, ester, carboxylic, amide and carbons from carbohydrates). Then, we calculate the SOM composition in the main biomolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and lignin) on the basis of previous ¹³C NMR based estimates of the molecular composition of the organic mixtures. Results show that the SOM is still labile at 7 m below the seafloor (mbsf) and composed of about 25% proteins and 15% carbohydrates. With increasing depth, the protein content exponentially decreases to 13% at 367 mbsf, whereas the carbohydrate content decreases linearly to 11%. The lignin and lipid content consistently represent around 10% and 40% of the SOM, respectively, and show an increase with depth, due mostly to selective enrichment as the more labile components are lost by degradation. Thus, these components of the SOM are considered refractory at the depth scale considered. The calculated remineralization rates are extremely slow ranging from 5.6 mol C m⁻³ ky⁻¹ at the top of the core to 0.2 mol C m⁻³ ky⁻¹ according to the organic carbon flux to the seafloor. Knowing the labile carbon losses, we propose a method to calculate the initial TOC before the diagenesis took place.