TY - JOUR T1 - New Asgard archaea capable of anaerobic hydrocarbon cycling JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/527697 SP - 527697 AU - Kiley W. Seitz AU - Nina Dombrowski AU - Laura Eme AU - Anja Spang AU - Jonathan Lombard AU - Jessica R. Sieber AU - Andreas P. Teske AU - Thijs J.G. Ettema AU - Brett J. Baker Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/23/527697.abstract N2 - Large reservoirs of natural gas in the oceanic subsurface sustain a complex biosphere of anaerobic microbes, including recently characterized archaeal lineages that extend the potential to mediate hydrocarbon oxidation (methane and butane) beyond the Methanomicrobia. Here we describe a new archaeal phylum, Helarchaeota, belonging to the Asgard superphylum with the potential for hydrocarbon oxidation. We reconstructed Helarchaeota genomes from hydrothermal deep-sea sediment metagenomes in hydrocarbon-rich Guaymas Basin, and show that these encode novel methyl-CoM reductase-like enzymes that are similar to those found in butane-oxidizing archaea. Based on these results as well as the presence of several alkyl-CoA oxidation and Wood-Ljungdahl pathway genes in the Helarchaeota genomes, we suggest that members of the Helarchaeota have the potential to activate and subsequently anaerobically oxidize short-chain hydrocarbons. These findings link a new phylum of Asgard archaea to the microbial utilization of hydrothermally generated hydrocarbons, and extend this genomic blueprint further through the archaeal domain. ER -