Sulfur bacteria promote dissolution of authigenic carbonates at marine methane seeps
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Published version
Date
2021-07
Authors
Leprich, Dalton J.
Flood, Beverly E.
Schroedl, Peter R.
Ricci, Elizabeth
Marlow, Jeffery J.
Girguis, Peter R.
Bailey, Jake V.
Version
OA Version
Citation
D.J. Leprich, B.E. Flood, P.R. Schroedl, E. Ricci, J.J. Marlow, P.R. Girguis, J.V. Bailey. 2021. "Sulfur bacteria promote dissolution of authigenic carbonates at marine methane seeps." The ISME Journal, Volume 15, Issue 7, pp. 2043 - 2056. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-021-00903-3
Abstract
Carbonate rocks at marine methane seeps are commonly colonized by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria that co-occur with etch pits that suggest active dissolution. We show that sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are abundant on the surface of an exemplar seep carbonate collected from Del Mar East Methane Seep Field, USA. We then used bioreactors containing aragonite mineral coupons that simulate certain seep conditions to investigate plausible in situ rates of carbonate dissolution associated with sulfur-oxidizing bacteria. Bioreactors inoculated with a sulfur-oxidizing bacterial strain, Celeribacter baekdonensis LH4, growing on aragonite coupons induced dissolution rates in sulfidic, heterotrophic, and abiotic conditions of 1773.97 (±324.35), 152.81 (±123.27), and 272.99 (±249.96) μmol CaCO_3 • cm^−2 • yr^−1, respectively. Steep gradients in pH were also measured within carbonate-attached biofilms using pH-sensitive fluorophores. Together, these results show that the production of acidic microenvironments in biofilms of sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are capable of dissolving carbonate rocks, even under well-buffered marine conditions. Our results support the hypothesis that authigenic carbonate rock dissolution driven by lithotrophic sulfur-oxidation constitutes a previously unknown carbon flux from the rock reservoir to the ocean and atmosphere.
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License
© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.