Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-19-2018

Publication Title

Nature Communications

Volume

9

First page number:

1

Last page number:

11

Abstract

Microbes of the phylum Aigarchaeota are widely distributed in geothermal environments, but their physiological and ecological roles are poorly understood. Here we analyze six Aigarchaeota metagenomic bins from two circumneutral hot springs in Tengchong, China, to reveal that they are either strict or facultative anaerobes, and most are chemolithotrophs that can perform sulfide oxidation. Applying comparative genomics to the Thaumarchaeota and Aigarchaeota, we find that they both originated from thermal habitats, sharing 1154 genes with their common ancestor. Horizontal gene transfer played a crucial role in shaping genetic diversity of Aigarchaeota and led to functional partitioning and ecological divergence among sympatric microbes, as several key functional innovations were endowed by Bacteria, including dissimilatory sulfite reduction and possibly carbon monoxide oxidation. Our study expands our knowledge of the possible ecological roles of the Aigarchaeota and clarifies their evolutionary relationship to their sister lineage Thaumarchaeota.

Disciplines

Biology | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

File Format

pdf

File Size

3.784 Kb

Language

English

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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