Temporal resilience and dynamics of anaerobic methane-oxidizing microbial communities to short-term changes in methane partial pressures

Abstract:

Marine sediments produce tens to hundreds of teragrams of methane annually, which is released from the seabed at thousands of cold seeps distributed globally along continental margins. Around 80-90% of this methane is consumed in shallower sediment layers before reaching the hydrosphere, in a microbially-mediated process known as anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) However, cold seeps appear to exhibit temporal variation in gas flux intensity, and AOM filter efficiency at cold seeps generally decreases with fluid flow rate. To our knowledge, the degree to which temporal heterogeneity in subsurface methane flux stimulates AOM community growth and adaptation to increased methane concentrations has not been investigated. Static high-pressure bioreactors were used to incubate sulfate-methane transition zone (SMTZ) and methanogenic zone sediments underlying a Mediterranean mud volcano gas flare under in situ temperature and pressure at 8 MPa methane. Sulfide production rates of 0.4 µmol/cm³/day in both sediment regimes after 4 months of incubation suggested the resilience of the marine subsurface methane filter may extend well below the SMTZ (40 cm). Similar incubations of SMTZ samples from below a gas flare off Svalbard at saturating (3.8 MPa) and 0.2 MPa methane are being sampled after 1 week, 4 weeks, and 4 months; sulfide production rates of 8-18 nmol/cm³/day were first observed after 4 weeks of incubation. Sediment samples at all specified time points for both sets of incubations were collected for nucleic acid extraction and cell fixation. Anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are expected dominant taxa in enriched and non-enriched communities. 16S rDNA community analysis is expected to reveal additional microbial players involved in the short-term adaptation to higher methane partial pressures in the marine subsurface. Increased AOM community activity (RNA/DNA ratio) and copy numbers of methane cycling transcripts (mcrA, dsrAB) are anticipated at longer enrichments and higher methane concentrations. A more thorough understanding of AOM community dynamics in response to changes in methane concentrations is expected to yield more accurate carbon cycling models pertaining to the world’s largest reduced carbon reservoir.