archaeol an indicator of methanogenesis in water-saturated soilsarchaeol水饱和土壤中甲烷生成的一个指标.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Archaea Volume 2012, Article ID 896727, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2012/896727 Research Article Archaeol: An Indicator of Methanogenesis in Water-Saturated Soils Katie L. H. Lim,1 Richard D. Pancost,1 Edward R. C. Hornibrook,2 Peter J. Maxfield,1 and Richard P. Evershed1 1 Organic Geochemistry Unit, Bristol Biogeochemistry Research Centre and The Cabot Institute, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Cantock’s Close, Bristol BS8 1TS, UK 2 Bristol Biogeochemistry Research Centre and The Cabot Institute, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen’s Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK Correspondence should be addressed to Richard D. Pancost, r.d.pancost@bristol.ac.uk Received 21 August 2012; Accepted 16 October 2012 Academic Editor: Michael Hoppert Copyright © 2012 Katie L. H. Lim et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oxic soils typically are a sink for methane due to the presence of high-affinity methanotrophic Bacteria capable of oxidising methane. However, soils experiencing water saturation are able to host significant methanogenic archaeal communities, potentially affecting the capacity of the soil to act as a methane sink. In order to provide insight into methanogenic populations in such soils, the distribution of archaeol in free and conjugated forms was investigated as an indicator of fossilised and living methanogenic biomass using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with selected ion monitoring. Of three soils studied, only one organic matter-rich site contained archaeol in quantifiable amoun