EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Significant contribution of Archaea to extant biomass in marine subsurface sediments

Julius S. Lipp, Yuki Morono, Fumio Inagaki and Kai-Uwe Hinrichs ()
Additional contact information
Julius S. Lipp: Organic Geochemistry Group, University of Bremen, PO Box 330 440, 28334 Bremen, Germany
Yuki Morono: Geomicrobiology Group, Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Monobe B200, Nankoku, Kochi 783-8502, Japan
Fumio Inagaki: Geomicrobiology Group, Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Monobe B200, Nankoku, Kochi 783-8502, Japan
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs: Organic Geochemistry Group, University of Bremen, PO Box 330 440, 28334 Bremen, Germany

Nature, 2008, vol. 454, issue 7207, 991-994

Abstract: Abstract Deep drilling into the marine sea floor has uncovered a vast sedimentary ecosystem of microbial cells1,2. Extrapolation of direct counts of stained microbial cells to the total volume of habitable marine subsurface sediments suggests that between 56 Pg (ref. 1) and 303 Pg (ref. 3) of cellular carbon could be stored in this largely unexplored habitat. From recent studies using various culture-independent techniques, no clear picture has yet emerged as to whether Archaea or Bacteria are more abundant in this extensive ecosystem4,5,6,7. Here we show that in subsurface sediments buried deeper than 1 m in a wide range of oceanographic settings at least 87% of intact polar membrane lipids, biomarkers for the presence of live cells7,8, are attributable to archaeal membranes, suggesting that Archaea constitute a major fraction of the biomass. Results obtained from modified quantitative polymerase chain reaction and slot-blot hybridization protocols support the lipid-based evidence and indicate that these techniques have previously underestimated archaeal biomass. The lipid concentrations are proportional to those of total organic carbon. On the basis of this relationship, we derived an independent estimate of amounts of cellular carbon in the global marine subsurface biosphere. Our estimate of 90 Pg of cellular carbon is consistent, within an order of magnitude, with previous estimates, and underscores the importance of marine subsurface habitats for global biomass budgets.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07174 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:454:y:2008:i:7207:d:10.1038_nature07174

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature07174

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:454:y:2008:i:7207:d:10.1038_nature07174