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The influence of salinity on the abundance, transcriptional activity, and diversity of AOA and AOB in an estuarine sediment: a microcosm study

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Estuarine sediment-seawater microcosms were established to evaluate the influence of salinity on the population, transcriptional activity, and diversity of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB). AOA was found to show the most abundant and the highest transcriptional activity under moderate salinity; on the other hand, AOB abundance was not sensitive to salinity variation but showed the highest transcriptional activity in the low-salinity microcosms. AOA exhibited more advantages than AOB on growth and ammonia-oxidizing activity under moderate- and high-salinity environments. The highest richness and diversity of active AOA were found under salinity of 15 psu. All the active AOA detected under the salinities studied were clustered into Nitrosopumilus maritimus linage, with the composition shifted from N. maritimus C12 cluster, N. maritimus like 1.1 cluster, N. maritimus SCM1 cluster, and N. maritimus like 1.2 cluster to N. maritimus C12 and N. maritimus A10 clusters when salinity was increased from 5 to 30 psu.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a General Project (No. 51178002) granted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The authors 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.

Conflicts of interest

All contributing authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Author notes

  1. Yan Zhang

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

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Yan Zhang, Lujun Chen & Jinping Tian

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

    Lujun Chen

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

    Tianjiao Dai & Donghui Wen

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  1. Yan Zhang
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  2. Lujun Chen
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  3. Tianjiao Dai
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  5. Donghui Wen
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Correspondence to Donghui Wen.

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Zhang, Y., Chen, L., Dai, T. et al. The influence of salinity on the abundance, transcriptional activity, and diversity of AOA and AOB in an estuarine sediment: a microcosm study. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 9825–9833 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6804-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6804-x

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