Diversity of Thiosulfate-Oxidizing Bacteria from Marine Sediments and Hydrothermal Vents

Abstract

Species diversity, phylogenetic affiliations, and environmental occurrence patterns of thiosulfate-oxidizing marine bacteria were investigated by using new isolates from serially diluted continental slope and deep-sea abyssal plain sediments collected off the coast of New England and strains cultured previously from Galapagos hydrothermal vent samples. The most frequently obtained new isolates, mostly from 10 3 -and 10 4 -fold dilutions of the continental slope sediment, oxidized thiosulfate to sulfate and fell into a distinct phylogenetic cluster of marine alpha-Proteobacteria. Phylogenetically and physiologically, these sediment strains resembled the sulfate-producing thiosulfate oxidizers from the Galapagos hydrothermal vents while showing habitat-related differences in growth temperature, rate and extent of thiosulfate utilization, and carbon substrate patterns. The abyssal deep-sea sediments yielded predominantly base-producing thiosulfate-oxidizing isolates related to Antarctic marine Psychroflexus species and other cold-water marine strains of the Cytophaga-FlavobacteriumBacteroides phylum, in addition to gamma-proteobacterial isolates of the genera Pseudoalteromonas and Halomonas-Deleya. Bacterial thiosulfate oxidation is found in a wide phylogenetic spectrum of Flavobacteria and Proteobacteria.Recent microbial surveys of marine offshore and deep-sea sediments have revealed considerable bacterial biodiversity in this extreme marine environment; cultivated isolates from deep-sea trench sediments include members of the actinomycetes, of the low guanine-plus-cytosine gram-positive bacteria, and of alpha-and gamma-Proteobacteria (66, 67). Heterotrophic, aerobic, or denitrifying deep-sea isolates, mostly barophiles, from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belong to the gamma-proteobacterial genera Colwellia, Moritella, and Shewanella (14). Anoxic deep sediment layers have yielded nitrate reducers, fermentative bacteria, and sulfate reducers (46). Isolations from deep-sea hydrothermal vents frequently focused on the microbial populations of the sulfur cycle. Reduced sulfur species of hydrothermal origin favor abundant microbial populations of mesophilic sulfur oxidizers, including autotrophic Thiomicrospira and Thiobacillus species (17,30,54,78) as well as heterotrophic sulfur-oxidizing strains (18, 54).The bacterial communities of hydrothermal vent sites and of nonhydrothermal water columns and sediments have at least one significant bacterial type in common, the loosely defined group of the heterotrophic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria (18, 69). These heterotrophic bacteria can oxidize reduced sulfur compounds, but do not depend on this reaction for growth. Two groups with different pH responses can be distinguished, the acid-producing and the base-producing thiosulfate oxidizers (54, 69). In both cases, the pH change is generally in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 pH units (54). Some base-producing strains studied in detail oxidized thiosulfate as an auxiliary electron donor to tetrathionate; this allowed them to use a grea...

Microbial metabolisms in a 2.5-km-deep ecosystem created by hydraulic fracturing in shales

“…Biofilm, organic acid and H 2 production, together with the capacity to reduce thiosulfate to sulfide (using three copies of the rhodanese-like thiosulfate:cyanide sulfur-transferase gene 3 ), implicate a role for shale Halanaerobium in steel corrosion and reservoir souring 21 . Additionally, the near-complete Halomonadaceae genome also encodes multiple thiosulfate sulfur-transferase genes, which while not previously reported in these taxa, are implicated in thiosulfate disproportionation, producing sulfide and sulfite 22 . Current microbial corrosion diagnostic practices often rely on detecting the presence of dissimilatory sulfate-reducing genes or measuring sulfate-reducing metabolic potential.…”

Idiomarina baltica sp. nov., a marine bacterium with a high optimum growth temperature isolated from surface water of the central Baltic Sea

“…The highest similarity (98?5 % with OS145 T ) for a submitted sequence was obtained for strain TAG C7, a halophilic bacterium isolated from the TAG hydrothermal mound of the MidAtlantic Ridge (at a depth of 3700 m). Another strain that showed high 16S rDNA sequence similarity with OS145 T (98?3 %) was strain DIII1c, isolated from the New England Shelf sediment (at a depth of 1500 m) (Teske et al, 2000). Isolates and sequences derived from the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean showed a lower level of 16S rDNA similarity with the two Baltic Sea strains, which ranged from 97?1 to 96?5 %, e.g.…”

Isolation of an aerobic sulfur oxidizer from the SUP05/Arctic96BD-19 clade

“…The gamma proteobacteria include Pseudomonads, Pseudoalteromonas and Halomonas-Deleya (Tuttle et al, 1974;Teske et al, 2000). These lineages (along with epsilon proteobacteria) are common at hydrothermal vents and at oxic/anoxic interfaces, where reduced sulfur compounds are used to produce energy (Tuttle et al, 1974;Ruby et al, 1981;Durand et al, 1994;Teske et al, 2000;Sorokin, 2003;Podgorsek et al, 2004). Sulfur oxidation enables these bacteria to use more organic carbon for biosynthesis and less for respiration, giving them the ability to compete in a wide range of marine habitats (Teske et al, 2000;Podgorsek et al, 2004).…”

“…They are found in diverse lineages, including alpha and gamma proteobacteria and the Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides group (Teske et al, 2000) and some marine Firmicutes. The gamma proteobacteria include Pseudomonads, Pseudoalteromonas and Halomonas-Deleya (Tuttle et al, 1974;Teske et al, 2000).…”

“…They are found in diverse lineages, including alpha and gamma proteobacteria and the Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides group (Teske et al, 2000) and some marine Firmicutes. The gamma proteobacteria include Pseudomonads, Pseudoalteromonas and Halomonas-Deleya (Tuttle et al, 1974;Teske et al, 2000). These lineages (along with epsilon proteobacteria) are common at hydrothermal vents and at oxic/anoxic interfaces, where reduced sulfur compounds are used to produce energy (Tuttle et al, 1974;Ruby et al, 1981;Durand et al, 1994;Teske et al, 2000;Sorokin, 2003;Podgorsek et al, 2004).…”