Lake sediments play a critical role in organic carbon
(OC) conservation.
However, the biogeochemical processes of the C cycle in lake ecosystems
remain limitedly understood. In this study, Fe fractions and OC fractions,
including total OC (TOC) and OC associated with iron oxides (TOCFeO), were measured for sediments from a eutrophic lake in
China. The abundance and composition of bacterial communities encoding
genes cbbL and cbbM were obtained by using high-throughput sequencing.
We found that autochthonous algae with a low C/N ratio together with
δ13C values predominantly contributed to the OC burial
in sediments rather than terrigenous input. TOCFeO served
as an important C sink deposited in the sediments. A significantly
positive correlation (r = 0.92, p < 0.001) suggested the remarkable regulation of complexed FeO
(Fep) on fixed TOC fractions, and the Fe redox shift triggered the
loss of deposited OC. It should be noted that a significant correlation
was not found between the absolute abundance of C-associating genera
and TOC, as well as TOCFeO, and overlying water. Some rare
genera, including Acidovora and Thiobacillus, served as keystone species and had
a higher connected degree than the genera with high absolute abundance.
These investigations synthetically concluded that the absolute abundance
of functional genes did not dominate CO2 fixation into
the sediments via photosynthesis catalyzed by the C-associating RuBisCO
enzyme. That is, rare genera, together with high-abundance genera,
control the C association and fixation in the sediments.