An Essential Role for Tungsten in the Ecology and Evolution of a Previously Uncultivated Lineage of Anaerobic, Thermophilic Archaea

Authors

• Steffen Buessecker, Stanford UniversityFollow
• Marike Palmer, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
• Dengxun Lai, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Joshua Dimapilis, California State University
• Xavier Mayali, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Damon Mosier, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Jian-Yu Jiao, Sun Yat-Sen University
• Daniel R. Colman, Montana State University
• Lisa M. Keller, Montana State University
• Emily St John, Portland State University
• Michelle Miranda, California State University, San Bernardino
• Cristina Gonzalez, California State University, San Bernardino
• Lizett Gonzalez, California State University, San Bernardino
• Christian Sam, California State University, San Bernardino
• Christipher Villa, California State University, San Bernardino
• Madeline Zhuo, California State University, San Bernardino
• Nicholas Bodman, California State University, San Bernardino
• Fernando Robles, California State University, San Bernardino
• Eric S. Boyd, Montana State University
• Alysia D. Cox, Montana Technological University
• Brian St Clair, Montana Technological University
• Zheng-Shuang Hua, University of Science and Technology of China
• Wen-Jun Li, Henan Normal University
• Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Portland State University
• Matthew B. Stott, University of Canterbury
• Peter K. Weber, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Anne E. Dekas, Stanford University
• Brian P. Hedlund, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Jeremy A. Dodsworth, California State University, San Bernardino

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-30-2022

Publication Title

Nature Communications

Volume

13

First page number:

1

Last page number:

13

Abstract

Trace metals have been an important ingredient for life throughout Earth’s history. Here, we describe the genome-guided cultivation of a member of the elusive archaeal lineage Caldarchaeales (syn. Aigarchaeota), Wolframiiraptor gerlachensis, and its growth dependence on tungsten. A metagenome-assembled genome (MAG) of W. gerlachensis encodes putative tungsten membrane transport systems, as well as pathways for anaerobic oxidation of sugars probably mediated by tungsten-dependent ferredoxin oxidoreductases that are expressed during growth. Catalyzed reporter deposition-fluorescence in-situ hybridization (CARD-FISH) and nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (nanoSIMS) show that W. gerlachensis preferentially assimilates xylose. Phylogenetic analyses of 78 high-quality Wolframiiraptoraceae MAGs from terrestrial and marine hydrothermal systems suggest that tungstenassociated enzymes were present in the last common ancestor of extant Wolframiiraptoraceae. Our observations imply a crucial role for tungsten-dependent metabolism in the origin and evolution of this lineage, and hint at a relic metabolic dependence on this trace metal in early anaerobic thermophiles.

Keywords

Compact radiation sources; Radio transient sources; Radio bursts; Radio continuum emission; Interstellar medium

Disciplines

Life Sciences

File Format

pdf

File Size

3500 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

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

Repository Citation

Buessecker, S., Palmer, M., Lai, D., Dimapilis, J., Mayali, X., Mosier, D., Jiao, J., Colman, D. R., Keller, L. M., John, E. S., Miranda, M., Gonzalez, C., Gonzalez, L., Sam, C., Villa, C., Zhuo, M., Bodman, N., Robles, F., Boyd, E. S., Cox, A. D., Clair, B. S., Hua, Z., Li, W., Reysenbach, A., Stott, M. B., Weber, P. K., Pett-Ridge, J., Dekas, A. E., Hedlund, B. P., Dodsworth, J. A. (2022). An Essential Role for Tungsten in the Ecology and Evolution of a Previously Uncultivated Lineage of Anaerobic, Thermophilic Archaea. Nature Communications, 13 1-13.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31452-8