Oxygen preference of deeply-rooted mesophilic Thaumarchaeota in forest soil

The goals of the study was to test the hypothesis of aerobic and/or anaerobic growth of deeply-rooted non-ammonia oxidising Thaumarchaeota. Indeed, the few genomes available predicted potential aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways, but the only enrichment culture available (published in 2019) for these non-AOA Thaumarchaeota has an anaerobic metabolism. Therefore, an in-situ assessment of their potential aerobic and anaerobic growth in mesophilic soils was much required. Using a combination of soil microcosms, qPCR and Illumina MiSeq sequencing on long fragment (>600 bp), we demonstrated the existence of both aerobic and anaerobic growth of non-AOA Thaumarchaeota, depending on the phylogenetic clusters.