Cascadia Hydrate Ridge (IODP site 1244) subsurface metagenome

Microorganisms in sediments control the turnover of organic carbon and the cycling of sulfur, nitrogen, and iron. Our understanding of how metabolic and geochemical roles are partitioned in these communities has been hampered the lack of cultured represents of the common sediment groups. Single-­-gene surveys have demonstrated that marine and estuary sediments are considerably diverse and contain numerous uncultured phyla. Recent innovations in genomic sequencing and analyses have enabled the reconstruction of genomes of uncultured microbes. Single-­cell genomic reconstruction of Miscellaneous Crenarchaeal Group (MCG-­1) and Marine Benthic Group (MBG)-­-D has revealed that these dominant archaeal groups are capable of the degradation of detrital proteins. Recently, numerous additional genomes have been reconstructed from whole-­-community sequence data including many widespread archaeal groups (MCG-­1, -­3, -6,-­7/17, -15, MBG--B, --D, SAGMEG, THSCG, and RC-­-III) and several candidate bacteria phyla (TA06, WS3, KSB1, KD3-­62, and previously overlooked WOR-­1, 2, and 3) from methane-­-rich estuary sediments. This has revealed considerable metabolic versatility in the sediment archaea including novel organic carbon degradation pathways, carbon fixation, fermentation, nitrite reduction, and sulfur cycling. We are interested in obtaining additional bacterial and archaeal phyla and comparing the metabolic capabilities of these estuarine genotypes to those present in methane-­rich, deep-­sea sediments.