PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rikuan Zheng
AU  - Ruining Cai
AU  - Rui Liu
AU  - Ge Liu
AU  - Chaomin Sun
TI  - Bacteroidetes contribute to the carbon and nutrient cycling of deep sea through breaking down diverse glycans
AID  - 10.1101/2020.11.07.372516
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.11.07.372516
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/08/2020.11.07.372516.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/08/2020.11.07.372516.full
AB  - Bacteroidetes are thought to be specialized for the degradation of algae-derived ocean polysaccharides and are a major contributor to the marine carbon and nutrient cycling. Here, we first show Bacteroidetes are the second most abundant phylum bacteria in deep-sea cold seep and possess more genes associated with polysaccharides degradation than other bacteria through metagenomics methods. We further isolate a novel Bacteroidetes species, Maribellus comscasis WC007T, which can efficiently degrade numerous different polysaccharides including: cellulose, pectin, fucoidan, mannan, xylan and starch. These results are verified by transcriptomic analyses and growth assays. Notably, we find cellulose promotes abundant bacterial growth, and using transcriptomics and metabolomics we finally report on the underlying mechanisms of cellulose degradation and utilization, as well as potential contributions to the carbon cycling. Overall, our results suggest Bacteroidetes play key roles in the deep-sea carbon and nutrient cycling, likely due to their high abundance and prominent polysaccharide degradation capabilities.One Sentence Summary Bacteroidetes contribute to ocean carbon and nutrient cycle.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.