Potential Rhodopsin- and Bacteriochlorophyll-Based Dual Phototrophy in a High Arctic Glacier

Discovery of glacial bacteria with potential dual phototrophy.Aiming to provide further pure culture and direct evolutionary evidence for dual phototrophy, we conducted both cultivation and metagenomics survey on the microbial communities in the “Lille Firn” glacier (LF) and nearby exposed soil (ES) in northeast Greenland (81.566° N, 16.363° W; Fig. S1). A collection of isolates of aerobic phototrophic bacteria was created from the LF surface glacial ice sample. Four pinkish colonies (designated strains vice154, vice278, vice304, and vice352) were further examined due to high similarities in their profiles on the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–time of flight mass spectrometer and due to the observation that vice154 and vice278 displayed weak BChl fluorescence signals inside the colony infrared imaging system (12). The 16S rRNA genes of these four strains are 100% identical and share 96.5% identity to Tardiphaga robiniae LMG 26467^T of the genus Tardiphaga of Alphaproteobacteria (13), indicating that they represent a novel species in the cryospheric cluster of Tardiphaga (Fig. 1A). In the glacial bacterial community (LF), members of Tardiphaga accounted for 0.017% (17/101,183 reads) (Fig. S2). No Tardiphaga-affiliated read was found in ES (n = 10,060). Thus, Tardiphaga represents one of the least abundant groups and occurs only in LF.

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FIG 1

(A) Maximum-likelihood phylogeny of 16S rRNA genes. (B) Abundance of pufM and rhodopsin genes in the “Little Firn” glacier (LF) and nearby exposed soil (ES) metagenomes, calculated as the number of mapped reads normalized to per-kb gene length divided by the normalized number of reads mapped to the housekeeping gene recA. (C) Genome synteny and sequence similarities of Tardiphaga sp. strains vice154, vice278, vice304, and vice352. The GenBank accession number and source environment of each 16S rRNA gene sequence are shown in parentheses on the tree. The architecture of photosynthesis gene cluster and xanthorhodopsin (XR) operon are highlighted. Gaps in the alignment show nonconserved regions caused by mobilome-related activities, including transposase, recombinase, integrase, or phage-related genes, the locations of which are highlighted in the genome. All genomes are complete and start at the replication origin locus. The black wavy line inside each genome (shown as boxes) represents GC content calculated in a window of 1 kb. The relationship between strains was estimated as a distance-based genome tree in the bottom left using MASH (https://github.com/marbl/Mash). Color bar, BLAST identities. (D) Genome synteny between two contigs from the XR-bearing glacial Tardiphaga MAG LF-bin-280 and the nonphototrophic glacial Tardiphaga MAG LF-bin-283 in reference to the genome of strain vice154. MAG, metagenome-assembled genome. (E) Maximum-likelihood phylogeny of the whole XR operon of Tardiphaga isolates and their top tBLASTn hits in NCBI’s genome database; see Fig. S5 for the full version of the tree.

Despite their monophyletic origin as reflected by the genome pairwise average nucleotide identity of >99.8% and the highly conserved genome synteny (Fig. 1C), these four strains differed in both genome size and GC content (Table S1). These differences were primarily caused by insertions and deletions (Fig. 1C), including a 45.7-kb photosynthesis gene cluster that is present in vice154 and vice278 but absent in vice304 and vice352. These two photosynthesis gene clusters differ only in the insertion of an IS5 family transposase gene between pucC and puhA in vice278 (Fig. 1C). No mobilome-related genes were found in the proximity of the photosynthesis gene cluster in both vice154 and vice278 (Fig. S3), suggesting that photosynthesis gene cluster is an ancient trait in their ancestor that later was lost in vice304 and vice352.

All four genomes contain an XR operon encoding XR-based phototrophy with the same gene arrangement (XR-crtEIBY-brp) and almost 100% identical nucleotide sequences (only one base difference out of 6,257 sites occurring in vice304) (Fig. 1C). The predicted XR protein sequence contains most of the conserved sites including key residues as proton acceptor and donor (Fig. S4), suggesting that it very likely encodes a functional proton pump. Interestingly, there are an additional unclassified rhodopsin gene and a putative methyl-accepting chemotaxis gene located immediately upstream of the XR operon and flanked by insertion (IS) elements at both sides.

The XR operon is located near the tRNA-Lys gene in all four genomes. Bacterial tRNA genes are considered recombination hot spot region in bacterial genomes (14). Thus, the presence of multiple IS elements and a tRNA gene in the vicinity of the XR operon strongly indicates that a horizontal operon transfer (HOT) event of the XR operon has occurred in these four strains. This was further supported by reconstruction of two Tardiphaga MAGs (LF-bin-280 with an XR operon and LF-bin-283 without an XR operon; Table 1), where HOT of a complete XR operon was recorded at a highly homologous region next to the tRNA-Glu gene (Fig. 1D). Since the first discovery of proteorhodopsins in the oceans (15), there has been a growing body of phylogeny-based evidence for horizontal transfer of rhodopsin genes occurring between prokaryotes (16–18). Our data provide further clear-cut evidence for HOT of the rhodopsin gene operon occurring in a natural microbial community.

In our Tardiphaga strains, HOT of the XR operon was likely driven by transposon activities as indicated by the presence of an integrase gene (tyrosine-type recombinase family) and direct or inverted repeats in adjacent genomic regions of the integrase gene. These repeats can serve as attachment sites of the recombinase located on the predicted XR transposon and IS630 composite transposon (Fig. 2A). The putative XR transposon is conserved and thus may occur in all Tardiphaga strains. Strain vice278 possesses an additional IS630 family transposase between the XR operon and the tRNA-Lys gene, an identical copy of which is located 45.7 kb apart upstream of the XR operon (Fig. 2A). These two identical IS630 genes can serve as inverted repeats for the formation of the putative IS630 composite transposon. Given that the nucleotide sequences of the whole XR operon in these four Tardiphaga genomes are almost 100% identical, the acquisition of an XR operon in their ancestor certainly occurred before the divergence of photosynthesis gene cluster.

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FIG 2

(A) Hypothetical evolutionary path of the Tardiphaga isolates from their common ancestor based on the IS insertion patterns (left) and two transposons proposed to drive the movement of the xanthorhodopsin (XR) operon (right). The genomic region surrounding the XR operon in Tardiphaga strain vice278 was shown to highlight the distribution of direct or inverted repeats that are required to form the putative transposons. RC, reaction center; IR, inverted repeat; DR, direct repeat, IRL, inverted repeat-left; IRR, inverted repeat-right. (B) A model for light availability in snow and ice and hypothesized niche partitioning of BChl- and rhodopsin-based dual phototrophy versus only BChl- or rhodopsin-based single phototrophy. The snowpack and icepack are depicted to be of such an ideal thickness that the light spectrum with the lowest extinction coefficient reaches the exact bottom of snowpack or icepack. PAR, photosynthetically active radiation. Note that new and old snows have different spectral distribution for PAR.

Ecological importance and wide distribution of potential dual phototrophs.Glaciers and ice sheets cover 10% of the land surface of the Earth, hosting an enormous diversity of microbes (19), among which light-driven metabolisms in BChl-based anoxygenic phototrophs have been proposed to have the potential of significantly influencing glacial carbon flux (20). BChl- and rhodopsin-based dual phototrophy can theoretically further reduce the consumption of organic matter for energy production in glacial bacteria by increasing the flexibility and efficiency in conserving light energy. Such dual phototrophy, if proved to function in situ in glacial microbial communities, could amplify the ecological importance of anoxygenic phototrophs in the glacial ecosystem.

We assessed the abundance of BChl-based phototrophs and rhodopsin-based phototrophs by targeting pufM and rhodopsin genes in the metagenomes of ES and LF. BChl-based phototrophs in both samples were comparable with LF showing a slightly higher abundance (23.3%) (Fig. 1B). However, rhodopsin-based phototrophs were almost 7-fold more abundant in LF than in ES (83.3% versus 12.2%, Fig. 1B), suggesting that rhodopsin-based phototrophs may play a more important role in supraglacial environments than BChl-based phototrophs, in line with the fact that rhodopsin-based phototrophy requires less energy and fewer components for assembly and thus probably responds faster to environmental changes than BChl-based phototrophy.

Dual phototrophy can be particularly advantageous in an extreme environment like the high Arctic glacial surface where phototrophic bacteria may have to exploit all available solar radiation for energy production. Given the advantage of dual phototrophy over single phototrophy in light harvesting, it is unclear why photosynthesis gene cluster was selectively lost in Tardiphaga sp. strains vice304 and vice352. We proposed two theories to explain this phenomenon, i.e., niche differentiation and gene mutation.

XR has maximum absorption in green light (9), while BChl and accessory carotenoids in anoxygenic phototrophs mostly absorb blue and infrared light (21). Different light wavelengths are attenuated differently through snow and ice. Under an ideal condition without impurities, gaps, and spatial heterogeneities occurring in snow and ice, blue light tends to reach the deepest into snow (22, 23), while green light at approximately 560 nm has the lowest attenuation coefficient within ice (24). Thus, different niches exist in glacial surface in terms of light intensity and quality, which may select for phototrophic bacteria with different preferences for light spectra (Fig. 2B). The loss of BChl-based phototrophy may also occur through random mutations in key photosynthetic genes, caused by, for instance, the activities of transposases, as we observed inside the photosynthesis gene cluster of strain vice278 (Fig. 1C).

There are nine MAGs reconstructed in this study that contain both pufM and rhodopsin genes (Table 1 and Table S2), including five from Alphaproteobacteria, three from Gammaproteobacteria, and one from Gemmatimonadetes, among which all but one were recovered from the LF glacier sample. To test if dual phototrophy is exclusively occurring in supraglacial environments, we further searched public databases (NCBI and ENA, n = 215,874; see Text S1) for bacterial genomes of similar dual phototrophy potential (BChl-based reaction center and proton-pumping rhodopsin). We found 3,442 XR/proteorhodopsin-like and 1,521 pufM-like tBLASTn hits (Table S3). Fifty-five genomes were predicted to contain both pufM and rhodopsin genes (Table S3) with the majority (n = 40) belonging to Alphaproteobacteria. Interestingly, there are also four Chloroflexi, three Bacteroidetes, two Deltaproteobacteria, two Gammaproteobacteria, and one Actinobacteria genome. Given the quality concern on the incomplete genomes deposited into public databases (25), it is unclear whether there is any composite among these genomes, especially those from Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria, where BChl-based phototrophy has not yet been reported. The isolation sources of these genomes cover various environments (Table S3), including freshwater, seawater, groundwater, hot spring, microbial mat/biofilm, soil, sediment, plant surface, and cryosphere (alpine/polar; n = 24), indicating that dual phototrophy is likely present in a wide range of bacteria and in a large variety of natural environments beyond glaciers.

Dual phototrophy is clearly not a metabolic trait that evolved only in glacial bacteria, albeit the four glacial Tardiphaga strains in this study and their XR operons both show cryospheric origins (Fig. 1E). We investigated whether these Tardiphaga strains have other metabolic traits that may enable them to adapt to the high Arctic glacial environment. Strikingly, all four genomes contain RuBisCO genes, a phosphoribulokinase gene, and a soluble methane monooxygenase gene (Table S4), pointing to the metabolic potentials of photoautotrophy and methanotrophy. We have so far failed to grow these Tardiphaga strains in liquid media and observed the expression of neither BChl nor XR under the tested laboratory growth conditions (Text S1). Further growth optimization and physiological data are warranted to verify their dual phototrophy and other metabolic potentials and to understand how these two types of phototrophy coordinate in their metabolic networks.

Materials and methods are available as supplemental material in Text S1.

Sequence data availability.Genomes, metagenomes, and raw reads were deposited into GenBank under BioProject numbers PRJNA548505 and PRJNA552582.