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Ammonia manipulates the ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria in the coastal sediment-water microcosms

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Ammonia was observed as a potential significant factor to manipulate the abundance and activity of ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms (AOMs) in water environments. For the first time, this study confirmed this phenomenon by laboratory cultivation. In a series of estuarine sediment-coastal water microcosms, we investigated the AOM’s phylogenetic composition and activity change in response to ammonia concentration. Increase of ammonia concentration promoted bacterial amoA gene abundance in a linear pattern. The ratio of transcribed ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) amoA gene/ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) amoA gene increased from 0.1 to 43 as NH4 +-N increased from less than 0.1 to 12 mg L−1, and AOA amoA transcription was undetected under 20 mg NH4 +-N L−1. The incubation of stable isotope probing (SIP) microcosms revealed a faster 13C-NaHCO3 incorporation rate of AOA amoA gene under 0.1 mg NH4 +-N L−1 and a sole 13C-NaHCO3 utilization of the AOB amoA gene under 20 mg NH4 +-N L−1. Our results indicate that ammonia concentration manipulates the structure of AOM. AOA prefers to live and perform higher amoA transcription activity than AOB in ammonia-limited water environments, and AOB tends to take the first contributor place in ammonia-rich ones.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a General Project (No. 51178002) granted by the Natural Science Foundation of China. The authors appreciate the great help from Zhejiang Provincial Zhoushan Marine Ecological Environmental Monitoring Station and Zhoushan Environmental Protection Bureau for the sampling sites’ determination. The authors also thank Zhongyuan Zheng, Jing Zhang, Zhichao Li, Chengfeng Zhang from Peking University, Cong Liu from Tsinghua University, and Yin Zhang from Shanghai Normal University for helping in the sample collection.

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.

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Author notes

  1. Yan Zhang

    Present address: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2W2, Canada

  2. Renhua Sun

    Present address: Rural Energy & Environment Agency, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing, 100125, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yan Zhang & Lujun Chen

  2. College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Tianjiao Dai, Renhua Sun & Donghui Wen

  3. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Science and Technology, Department of Environmental Technology and Ecology, Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, 314050, China

    Lujun Chen

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  1. Yan Zhang
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Correspondence to Donghui Wen.

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Zhang, Y., Chen, L., Dai, T. et al. Ammonia manipulates the ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria in the coastal sediment-water microcosms. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 6481–6491 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6524-2

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