| A large portion of the greenhouse gas methane on Earth is trapped in marine sediments. However, little methane actually reaches the hydrsphere and the atmosphere, because it is efficiently consumed by anaerobic methane-oxidizing Archaea (ANME). This methane is mainly biogenic in marine sédiments, and is produced by methanogenic Archaea. Methane ascends from deep sources to the seabed, in cold seep sites of continental margins. In order to study microbial community diversity in cold seeps, and to determine geochemical factors that control these microbial communities, we compared four geochemically and geologically distinct sites. In this work, molecular tools (PCR, RT-PCR, DGGE, cloning) as well as genetic markers (16S rRNA, mcrA, dsrB) were employed, to... |
