Exploring life's limits: Deep geobiochemistry

Abstract:

N-dimensional chemical space on Earth and beyond produces diverse habitats for microbial activity. Hydrothermal environments cover a wide range of habitable space up to and including life’s known limits and provide a window into deep geological, geochemical, and biological processes. Hydrothermal water compositions, as sampled from and measured in terrestrial hot springs on Earth's surface, vary in chemical constituent speciation and concentrations over orders of magnitude in a plethora of geochemical parameters with biological significance, including hydronium ion, sulfide, iron, zinc, magnesium, manganese, and molybdenum. Proteins provide a link between geochemistry and microbial activity by catalyzing chemical reactions. Proteins extracted and identified by tandem mass spectrometry from 13 hot spring sediments and biofilms - covering pH values from 2-9 and diverse geochemical compositions - function as efflux transporters, permeases, electron transporters, and others, suggesting that these processes were present in the environment and occurring at the time of sampling. Metalloenzymes have been identified, including the iron protein rubrerythrin, thought to be involved in oxidative stress protection in anaerobic bacteria and archaea, as well as proteins involved in macronutrient processing (carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, and sulfur). The melding of biochemistry with geochemistry shows potential for quantifying microbial activity in deep environments by demonstrating the presence - and as techniques improve, relative abundances - of reaction-catalyzing enzymes. Moreover, using hot spring sources and their outflow channels as chemical and biological models of geologic time helps decipher the origin and co-evolution of life and geochemistry.