Metagenomes from thawing low-soil-organic-carbon mineral cryosols and permafrost of the canadian high arctic

Archana Chauhan; Alice C Layton; Tatiana A Vishnivetskaya; Daniel Williams; Susan M Pfiffner; Bhanu Rekepalli; Brandon Stackhouse; Maggie C Y Lau; Tommy J Phelps; Nadia Mykytczuk; Jennifer Ronholm; Lyle Whyte; Tullis C Onstott; Gary S Sayler

doi:10.1128/genomeA.01217-14

Metagenomes from thawing low-soil-organic-carbon mineral cryosols and permafrost of the canadian high arctic

Genome Announc. 2014 Nov 20;2(6):e01217-14. doi: 10.1128/genomeA.01217-14.

Affiliations

¹ Center for Environmental Biotechnology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.
² National Institute for Computational Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
³ Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
⁴ Vale Living with Lakes Centre, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
⁵ Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Macdonald Campus of McGill University, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada.
⁶ sayler@utk.edu.

Abstract

Microbial release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost is a global concern. Seventy-six metagenomes were generated from low-soil-organic-carbon mineral cryosols from Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, Canada, during a controlled thawing experiment. Permafrost thawing resulted in an increase in anaerobic fermenters and sulfate-reducing bacteria but not methanogens.