2b). The changes are especially prominent between February and March for both microcosms. Considering their incubation in the laboratory without disturbance, these results suggest that the MTB population is very sensitive to the imperceptible changes in microenvironments. Our results are consistent with the previous report that the MTB community was found to be dynamic during long-term incubation in one microcosm (Flies et al., 2005b). Together, MTB communities are microenviroment-sensitive and thus potential proxies for changes of ecology and climate. However, because of only three individual samples from each microcosm, we lack the statistical www.selleckchem.com/products/ldk378.html power to determine correlations

between measured physical–chemical factors and the dynamics of MTB communities over time. Therefore, at this stage, we cannot determine the specific factors that influence the observed temporal variation in MTB communities. As evident in Fig. 4, the unifrac analysis clearly shows that the six MTB communities cluster by the microcosm rather than by the collection

time, indicating that the phylogenetic discrepancy of MTB communities collected from distinct microcosms exceeds the temporal variation in each microcosm. Because the microcosms were collected from two separate sites in Lake Miyun (Fig. 1), the above results suggest a potential adaption of different MTB lineages to their respective microenvironments. This is also supported by the distributions of MTB OTUs in clone libraries, as shown in Fig. 2, that no identical OTU is observed between check details the two microcosms and ‘M. bavaricum’-like MTB exclusively exist in microcosm MY8. A significant correlation between the phylogenetic distance of MTB

communities from the six clone libraries and nitrate concentrations of corresponding pore water is noted here (Table 2). Petermann & Bleil (1993) reported that nitrate or other nitrous oxides could be reduced by most MTB in deep marine environments and might contribute to their vertical distribution, which was supported by observations that the majority of cultivated MTB could utilize nitrous compounds as terminal electron acceptors for respiration (Flies et al., 2005a). A similar situation Tyrosine-protein kinase BLK is expected for uncultivated ‘M. bavaricum’-like MTB as well, because the phylogenetic nonmagnetic relatives of these MTB in Nitrospira phylum are nitrite-oxidizing bacteria that can oxidize nitrite to nitrate in environments (Daims et al., 2001). Together, these results suggest that nitrate may play an important role in the occurrence and distribution of MTB lineages in distinct microenvironments. Because the measurements of oxygen and iron are rudimentary in this study, we are not able to run statistical analyses for these factors; therefore, their contributions are unknown.