Inter- and Intra-Annual Bacterioplankton Community Patterns in a Deepwater Sub-Arctic Region: Persistent High Background Abundance of Putative Oil Degraders

Hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria naturally degrade and remove petroleum pollutants, yet baselines do not currently exist for these critical microorganisms in many regions where the oil and gas industry is active. Furthermore, understanding how a baseline community changes across the seasons and its potential to respond to an oil spill event are prerequisites for predicting their response to elevated hydrocarbon exposures. In this study, 16S rRNA gene-based profiling was used to assess the spatiotemporal variability of baseline bacterioplankton community composition in the Faroe-Shetland Channel (FSC), a deepwater sub-Arctic region where the oil and gas industry has been active for the last 40 years. Over a period of 2 years, we captured the diversity of the bacterioplankton community within distinct water masses (defined by their temperature and salinity) that have a distinct geographic origin (Atlantic or Nordic), depth, and direction of flow. We demonstrate that bacterioplankton communities were significantly different across water samples of contrasting origin and depth. Taxa of known hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria were observed at higher-than-anticipated abundances in water masses originating in the Nordic Seas, suggesting these organisms are sustained by an unconfirmed source of oil input in that region. In the event of an oil spill, our results suggest that the response of these organisms is severely hindered by the low temperatures and nutrient levels that are typical for the FSC.IMPORTANCE Oil spills at sea are one of the most disastrous anthropogenic pollution events, with the Deepwater Horizon spill providing a testament to how profoundly the health of marine ecosystems and the livelihood of its coastal inhabitants can be severely impacted by spilled oil. The fate of oil in the environment is largely dictated by the presence and activities of natural communities of oil-degrading bacteria. While a significant effort was made to monitor and track the microbial response and degradation of the oil in the water column in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill, the lack of baseline data on the microbiology of the Gulf of Mexico confounded scientists' abilities to provide an accurate assessment of how the system responded relative to prespill conditions. This data gap highlights the need for long-term microbial ocean observatories in regions at high risk of oil spills. Here, we provide the first microbiological baseline established for a subarctic region experiencing high oil and gas industry activity, the northeast Atlantic, but with no apparent oil seepage or spillage. We also explore the presence, relative abundances, and seasonal dynamics of indigenous hydrocarbon-degrading communities. These data will advance the development of models to predict the behavior of such organisms in the event of a major oil spill in this region and potentially impact bioremediation strategies by enhancing the activities of these organisms in breaking down the oil.

Microbial Niche Diversification in the Galápagos Archipelago and Its Response to El Niño

The Galápagos Archipelago is located at the intersection of several major oceanographic features that produce diverse environmental conditions around the islands, and thus has the potential to serve as a natural laboratory for discerning the underlying environmental factors that structure marine microbial communities. Here we used quantitative metagenomics to characterize microbial communities in relation to archipelago marine habitats, and how those populations shift due to substantial environmental changes brought on by El Niño. Environmental conditions such as temperature, salinity, inorganic dissolved nutrients, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations varied throughout the archipelago, revealing a diversity of potential microbial niches arising from upwelling, oligotrophic to eutrophic gradients, physical isolation, and potential island mass effects. The volumetric abundances of microbial community members shifted with these environmental changes and revealed several taxonomic indicators of different water masses. This included a transition from a Synechococcus dominated system in the west to an even mix of Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus in the east, mirroring the archipelago’s mesotrophic to oligotrophic and productivity gradients. Several flavobacteria groups displayed characteristic habitat distributions, including enrichment of Polaribacter and Tenacibaculum clades in the relatively nutrient rich western waters, Leeuwenhoekiella spp. that were enriched in the more nutrient-deplete central and eastern sites, and the streamlined MS024-2A group found to be abundant across all sites. During the 2015/16 El Niño event, both environmental conditions and microbial community composition were substantially altered, primarily on the western side of the archipelago due to the reduction of upwelling from the Equatorial Undercurrent. When the upwelling resumed, concentrations of inorganic nutrients and DOC at the western surface sites were more typical of mesopelagic depths. Correspondingly, Synechococcus abundances decreased by an order of magnitude, while groups associated with deeper water masses were enriched, including streamlined roseobacters HTCC2255 and HIMB11, Thioglobacaceae, methylotrophs (Methylophilaceae), archaea (Nitrosopumilaceae), and distinct subpopulations of Pelagibaceriales (SAR11 clade). These results provide a quantitative framework to connect community-wide microbial volumetric abundances to their environmental drivers, and thus incorporation into biogeochemical and ecological models.

Production of Dibromomethane and Changes in the Bacterial Community in Bromoform-Enriched Seawater

The responses of bacterial communities to halocarbon were examined using a 28-d incubation of bromoform- and methanol-enriched subarctic surface seawater. Significant increases were observed in dibromomethane concentrations and bacterial 16S rRNA gene copy numbers in the treated substrates incubated for 13 d. The accumulated bacterial community was investigated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and amplicon analyses. The dominant genotypes corresponded to the genera Roseobacter, Lentibacter, and Amylibacter; the family Flavobacteriaceae; and the phylum Planctomycetes, including methylotrophs of the genus Methylophaga and the family Methylophilaceae. Therefore, various phylotypes responded along with the dehalogenation processes in subarctic seawater.

A gene cluster for fatty alcohol synthesis from a Reinekea-related bacterium that accumulates fatty alcohols

This study reports on a marine bacterium that accumulates fatty alcohols (C_14,16,18 ) at more than 1% (w/w) of the dry cell weight. This unique bacterium, designated as strain 1-4, is related to the genus Reinekea. A novel gene cluster for fatty alcohol synthesis, phsAB, is identified from strain 1-4. The phsA product shows significant homology to fatty acyl-CoA reductase (51% identity), whereas the phsB product shows very low homology to lipases. Interestingly, phsA alone causes Escherichia coli to accumulate fatty alcohols at 19% (w/w) of the dry cell weight. Moreover, the phsA-containing E. coli accumulate more fatty alcohols (24%) and grow faster after phsB is introduced, indicating that phsAB could greatly assist the mass production of fatty alcohols.

Amylibacter cionae sp. nov., isolated from the sea squirt Ciona savignyi

A Gram-stain-negative, non-motile, aerobic and rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated H-12T, was isolated from a sea squirt (Ciona savignyi) collected from Tsingtao Port, Jiaozhou Bay, China, and its taxonomic position was investigated. Strain H-12T grew optimally at 25-30 °C, at pH 7.0-8.0 and in the presence of 3.0-4.0 % (w/v) NaCl. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain H-12T exhibited the highest similarity to that of the type strain of Amylibacter marinus (95.3 %). A neighbour-joining phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that strain H-12T clustered with the type strain of A. marinus. The predominant ubiquinone in strain H-12T was identified as Q-10. The major fatty acids of strain H-12T were C18 : 1ω7c and C18 : 1ω7c 11-methyl. The major polar lipids detected in strain H-12T were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, one unidentified aminolipid, two unidentified phospholipids and five unidentified lipids. The DNA G+C content of strain H-12T was 52.7 mol%. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic properties, strain H-12T is considered to represent a novel species within the genus Amylibacter, for which the name Amylibacter cionae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is H-12T (=KCTC 52581T=CGMCC 1.15880T).

Genome Sequence of the Psychrophilic Bacterium Tenacibaculum ovolyticum Strain da5A-8 Isolated from Deep Seawater

Some bacterial species of the genus Tenacibaculum, including Tenacibaculum ovolyticum, have been known as fish pathogens in the sea. So far, the only published genome sequence for this genus is for Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi, which could also be a fish pathogen. Strain da5A-8, showing 100% identity to the 16S rRNA gene sequence of T. ovolyticum DSM 18103^T, was isolated from seawater at a depth of 344 m in Kochi, Japan, and grew optimally at 10 to 20°C. The genome sequence of strain da5A-8 revealed the possible virulence genes commonly observed in the genus Tenacibaculum.