A widespread group of large plasmids in methanotrophic Methanoperedens archaea

Marie C. Schoelmerich, Heleen T. Ouboter, Rohan Sachdeva, Petar I. Penev, Yuki Amano, Jacob West-Roberts, Cornelia U. Welte and Jillian F. Banfield ()
Additional contact information
Marie C. Schoelmerich: University of California
Heleen T. Ouboter: Radboud University
Rohan Sachdeva: University of California
Petar I. Penev: University of California
Yuki Amano: Japan Atomic Energy Agency
Jacob West-Roberts: University of California
Cornelia U. Welte: Radboud University
Jillian F. Banfield: University of California

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Anaerobic methanotrophic (ANME) archaea obtain energy from the breakdown of methane, yet their extrachromosomal genetic elements are little understood. Here we describe large plasmids associated with ANME archaea of the Methanoperedens genus in enrichment cultures and other natural anoxic environments. By manual curation we show that two of the plasmids are large (155,605 bp and 191,912 bp), circular, and may replicate bidirectionally. The plasmids occur in the same copy number as the main chromosome, and plasmid genes are actively transcribed. One of the plasmids encodes three tRNAs, ribosomal protein uL16 and elongation factor eEF2; these genes appear to be missing in the host Methanoperedens genome, suggesting an obligate interdependence between plasmid and host. Our work opens the way for the development of genetic vectors to shed light on the physiology and biochemistry of Methanoperedens, and potentially genetically edit them to enhance growth and accelerate methane oxidation rates.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34588-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-34588-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34588-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().