Microbial Community Shifts on Organic Rocks of Different Maturities Reveal potential Catabolisers of Organic Matter in Coal

This study seeks to expand those models by observing community compositional shifts in the presence of differing organic matter by conducting 16S rRNA microbial surveys using formation water from the Surat and Sydney Basins grown on varying types of organic matter (black and brown coal, oil shale, humic acid, and lignin). A total of 135 microbes were observed to become enriched in the presence of added organic matter in comparison to carbon-free treatments. These surveys allowed detailed analysis of microbial compositions in order to extrapolate which taxa favour growth in the presence of differing organic matter. This study has experimentally demonstrated shifts in the microbial community composition due to differing carbon sources and, for the first time, generated a conceptual model to map putative degradation pathways regarding subsurface microbial consortia.PMID:34686899 | DOI:10.1007/s00248-021-01857-x
Source: Microbial Ecology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Source Type: research