Co-occurrence of nitrite-dependent anaerobic methane oxidizing and anaerobic ammonia oxidizing bacteria in two Qinghai-Tibetan saline lakes

Abstract

Nitrite-dependent anaerobic methane-oxidizing (n-damo) bacteria and anaerobic ammonia oxidizing (anammox) bacteria are two groups of microorganisms involved in global carbon and nitrogen cycling. In order to test whether the n-damo and anammox bacteria co-occur in natural saline environments, the DNA and cDNA samples obtained from the surficial sediments of two saline lakes (with salinity of 32 and 84 g/L, respectively) on the Tibetan Plateau were PCR-amplified with the use of anammox- and n-damo-specific primer sets, followed by clone library construction and phylogenetic analysis. DNA and cDNA-based clones affiliated with n-damo and anammox bacteria were successfully retrieved from the two samples, indicating that these two groups of bacteria can co-occur in natural saline environments with salinity as high as 84 g/L. Our finding has great implications for our understanding of the global carbon and nitrogen cycle in nature.

Keywords

anammox / n-damo / co-occurrence / saline lakes / Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41002123 , 41030211, and 41121001), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2011CB808800), the Fundamental Research Founds for National University, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), and the One-hundred Talent Project (A0961)βof CAS grant to ZPL. We are grateful to Huanye Wang at the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Jinxiang Wang at Tongji University for helping with sample collection. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers whose constructive criticisms significantly improved the quality of the manuscript.

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