Methanogens and Iron-Reducing Bacteria: the Overlooked Members of Mercury-Methylating Microbial Communities in Boreal Lakes

Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Andrea G BravoStefan Bertilsson

Abstract

Methylmercury is a potent human neurotoxin which biomagnifies in aquatic food webs. Although anaerobic microorganisms containing the hgcA gene potentially mediate the formation of methylmercury in natural environments, the diversity of these mercury-methylating microbial communities remains largely unexplored. Previous studies have implicated sulfate-reducing bacteria as the main mercury methylators in aquatic ecosystems. In the present study, we characterized the diversity of mercury-methylating microbial communities of boreal lake sediments using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA and hgcA genes. Our results show that in the lake sediments, Methanomicrobiales and Geobacteraceae also represent abundant members of the mercury-methylating communities. In fact, incubation experiments with a mercury isotopic tracer and molybdate revealed that only between 38% and 45% of mercury methylation was attributed to sulfate reduction. These results suggest that methanogens and iron-reducing bacteria may contribute to more than half of the mercury methylation in boreal lakes.IMPORTANCE Despite the global awareness that mercury, and methylmercury in particular, is a neurotoxin to which millions of people continue to be exposed, there are...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 6, 2018·Environmental Science. Processes & Impacts·Dimitri VlassopoulosPeggy A O'Day
Jan 27, 2019·Scientific Reports·Jingying XuAndrea G Bravo
Sep 17, 2019·Water Environment Research : a Research Publication of the Water Environment Federation·Paula C FureySylvia Lee
Jul 3, 2020·Limnology and Oceanography·Andrea G Bravo, Claudia Cosio
Jul 22, 2019·Environmental Pollution·Shuyang DuChangfeng Ding

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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
PRJEB20960

Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR
PCRs
amplicon sequencing

Software Mentioned

package taxize
hit
mothur
HMMER
pplacer
autoMR
NMDS
guppy
vegan
cd

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