Surface oil seeps from Alasht, Lapur and Jenesem share many compositional affinities including distributions and concentrations ofnormal alkanes, terpanes and steranes. These oils also show many similarities with that of Jurassic sediments (Shemshak Group, KlarizFormation) systematically sampled from the Galandrud Coal Mine. Recent geochemical studies in this area indicated that theShemshak Gro...

Microbial communities of methanogenic, sulfate-reducing and methanotrophic prokaryotes from deepsea environments were investigated by molecular phylogenetic analysis of the deduced amino acid sequences of the genes encoding for the methyl coenzyme M reductase (mcrA), dissimilatory sulfite reductase (dsrAB) and particulate methane monoxygenase (pmoA), respectively. Clone libraries of PCR amplifi...

As the most ancient metazoan, sponges have established close relationships with particular microbial symbionts. However, the characteristics and physiology of thioautotrophic symbionts in deep-sea sponges are largely unknown. Using a tailored "differential coverage binning" method on 22-Gb metagenomic sequences, we recovered the nearly complete genome of a sulfur-oxidizing bacterium (SOB) that ...

Quantifying in-situ gas hydrates at active seep sites in the eastern Black Sea using pressure coring technique K. Heeschen, M. Haeckel, I. Klaucke, M. K. Ivanov, and G. Bohrmann Research Centre Ocean Margins, Bremen, Germany Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), Kiel, Germany M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia now at: Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natura...

Communities of anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) grow slowly, which limits the ability to perform physiological studies. High methane partial pressure was previously successfully applied to stimulate growth, but it is not clear how different ANME subtypes and associated SRB are affected by it. Here, we report on the growth of ANME-SRB in a membrane c...

22 Anaerobic methane oxidizing communities of archaea (ANME) and sulfate reducing bacteria 23 (SRB) grow slowly, which limits physiological studies. High methane partial pressure was 24 previously successfully applied to stimulate growth, but it is not clear how different ANME 25 subtypes and associated sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) are affected by it. Here, we report 26 growth of ANME/SRB in...

The potential for microbial nitrogen fixation in the anoxic methane seep sediments in a mud volcano, the number 8 Kumano Knoll, was characterized by molecular phylogenetic analyses. A total of 111 of the nifH (a gene coding a nitrogen fixation enzyme, Fe protein) clones were obtained from different depths of the core sediments, and the phylogenetic analysis of the clones indicated the genetic d...