ABSTRACT

Methane is an important energy resource internationally, and a large proportion of this methane is produced by microbial communities living in coal seams. Despite the value of this resource for human energy security, our understanding of the metabolic roles played by specific taxa during the biodegradation of coal to methane in situ is quite limited. In order to develop a greater understanding of microbial catabolism on coal, a community from a coal seam in the Surat Basin, Australia, was incubated on 10 different aromatic organic compounds: coronene, benzo[a]pyrene, pyrene, phenanthrene, naphthalene, ethylbenzene, phenol, benzoate, vanillate and syringate. Each of these aromatic compounds either occurs in coal or is a possible product of the coal biodegradation process. 16S rRNA sequencing revealed substantial changes to each community in response to each aromatic carbon substrate provided. Abundant taxa from these substrate-specific communities were identified and their probable catabolic roles proposed based on literature searches of related taxa. This study is the first to link specific coal seam taxa to aromatic substrates available in coal seam environments. Two conceptual models of the putative degradation pathways and key taxa responsible are proposed.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚苏拉特盆地缺氧煤层微生物组中的芳香族化合物降解生物分类群

摘要

甲烷是国际上重要的能源，甲烷中的很大一部分是由生活在煤层中的微生物群落产生的。尽管此资源对于人类能源安全具有重要价值，但我们对特定分类单元在煤原位生物降解为甲烷的过程中所发挥的代谢作用的了解十分有限。为了加深对煤中微生物分解代谢的了解，将澳大利亚苏拉特盆地一个煤层中的一个群落与10种不同的芳族有机化合物：可乐烯，苯并[ a]py，pyr，菲，萘，乙苯，苯酚，苯甲酸酯，香草酸酯和丁香酸酯。这些芳族化合物中的每一种要么存在于煤中，要么是煤生物降解过程的可能产物。16S rRNA测序显示，响应提供的每种芳族碳底物，每个群落都发生了实质性变化。从相关底物的文献搜索中，鉴定了来自这些底物特异性群落的丰富的分类单元，并提出了它们可能的分解代谢作用。这项研究是第一个将特定的煤层类群与煤层环境中可用的芳香族底物联系起来的研究。提出了两种假定的降解途径和关键分类单元的概念模型。