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Comparison Of Thaumarchaeotal Populations From Four Deep Sea Basins., Stephen Techtmann, Nagissa Mahmoudi, Kendall T Whitt, Maria Fernanda Campa, Julian L Fortney, Dominique C Joyner, Terry C Hazen

Michigan Tech Publications

The nitrogen cycle in the marine environment is strongly affected by ammonia-oxidizing Thaumarchaeota. In some marine settings, Thaumarchaeotes can comprise a large percentage of the prokaryotic population. To better understand the biogeographic patterns of Thaumarchaeotes, we sought to investigate differences in their abundance and phylogenetic diversity between geographically distinct basins. Samples were collected from four marine basins (The Caspian Sea, the Great Australian Bight, and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean). The concentration of bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA genes and archaeal amoA genes were assessed using qPCR. Minimum entropy decomposition was used to elucidate the fine-scale diversity of Thaumarchaeotes. We …