Abstract:
The anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) is a globally significant biogeochemical process that exerts a profound influence on methane flux between oceanic and atmospheric compartments of the biosphere. In marine sediments AOM occurs in a region of sulfate and methane depletion known as the sulfate–methane transition zone (SMTZ) where methane is converted to carbon dioxide and reduced products that are in turn used as electron donors in the conversion of sulfate to hydrogen sulfide and water. From a bioenergetic perspective, AOM represents a major source of maintenance energy within the SMTZ, and despite low estimated free energy yields supports a vigorous microbial metabolism. Lipid biomarker, phylogenetic stain and environmental PCR studies aimed at determining the biological component of AOM converge on microbial communities dominated by uncultivated anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea (ANME-1, ANME-2 and ANME-3) and sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB). Specific physical associations between these groups have been observed consistent with syntrophic modes of growth. However, despite extensive mesocosm and labeling studies the precise mode of electron transfer between ANME and SRB remains unknown. Recent cultivation-independent studies of AOM communities from the Eel River Basin, Hydrate Ridge and the Black Sea have led to preliminary reconstruction of the genes and pathways mediating carbon and energy metabolism within ANME subgroups providing a genomic and proteomic basis for inferring substrate ranges, intermediates and terminal electron acceptors. The following chapter reviews biochemical aspects of AOM with special emphasis on pathway validation, electron flow and enzyme function. We consider how ANME subgroup partitioning and gene expression profiles overlap with prevailing thermodynamic models and speculate on syntrophic growth models as they relate to broader aspects of community metabolism within AOM sediments.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada for supporting ongoing studies on the anaerobic oxidation of methane. L.C. was supported by a fellowship from NSERC and M.T. was supported by fellowships from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Germany and the TULA foundation funded Centre for Microbial Diversity and Evolution. We would also like to thank Heather Mottaz, Angela Norbeck and Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic at the US Department of Energy (DOE) funded Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for proteomics and bioinformatics capacity and our most excellent friends and colleagues David Walsh, Antoine Page and Leonard Foster for fruitful discussions and advice.
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Taupp, M., Constan, L., Hallam, S. (2010). The Biochemistry of Anaerobic Methane Oxidation. In: Timmis, K.N. (eds) Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77587-4_63
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77587-4_63
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