Thaumarchaeotal Signature Gene Distribution in Sediments of the 1 Northern South China Sea – an indicator for the metabolic intersection of 2 the marine carbon , nitrogen and phosphorus cycles ?

4 Hongyue Dang, Haixia Zhou, Jinying Yang, Huangmin Ge, Nianzhi Jiao, Xiwu Luan, 5 Chuanlun Zhang, and Martin G. Klotz 6 7 State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, Key Laboratory of Bioengineering and Biotechnology in 8 Universities of Shandong, Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, China University of Petroleum 9 (East China), Qingdao 266580, China; State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen 10 University, Xiamen 361005, China; State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai 11 200092, China; Key Laboratory of Marine Hydrocarbon Resources and Environmental Geology, Ministry of 12 Land and Resources of China, Qingdao 266071, China; Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology, Qingdao 13 266071, China; and Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA 14 15 AEM Section: Microbial Ecology 16 17