New publication by Gabriela Paredes, Tobias Viehböck, Raymond Lee, Marton Palatinszky, Michaela Mausz, Siegfried Reipert, Arno Schintlmeister, Andreas Maier, Jean-Marie Volland, Claudia Hirschfeld, Michael Wagner, David Berry, Stephanie Markert, Silvia Bulgheresi, Lena König
"Anaerobic Sulfur Oxidation Underlies Adaptation of a Chemosynthetic Symbiont to Oxic-Anoxic Interfaces"
This is the first study reporting on the global transcriptional response to oxygen of a thiotrophic animal ectosymbiont, "Ca. T. oneisti" which lives attached to marine nematodes inhabiting shallow-water sand. Surprisingly, S oxidation genes were upregulatedunder anoxic relative to oxic conditions. Furthermore, under anoxia, the ectosymbiont appeared to be less stressed and to proliferate more. We propose that animal-mediated access to oxygen, rather than enhancing sulfur oxidation, would facilitate the assimilation of carbon and nitrogen by the ectosymbiont.
Paredes GF, Viehboeck T, Lee R, Palatinszky M, Mausz MA, Reipert S, Schintlmeister A, Maier A, Volland J-M, Hirschfeld C, Wagner M, Berry D, Markert S, Bulgheresi S, König L. 2021. Anaerobic sulfur oxidation underlies adaptation of a chemosynthetic symbiont to oxic-anoxic interfaces. mSystems 6:e01186-20. doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.01186-20.