Conversion of methane-derived carbon and microbial community in enrichment cultures in response to O2 availability

Methanotrophs not only play an important role in mitigating CH4 emissions from the environment, but also provide a large quantity of CH4-derived carbon to their habitats. In this study, the distribution of CH4-derived carbon and microbial community was investigated in a consortium enriched at three O2 tensions, i.e., the initial O2 concentrations of 2.5 % (LO-2), 5 % (LO-1), and 21 % (v/v) (HO). The results showed that compared with the O2-limiting environments (2.5 and 5 %), more CH4-derived carbon was converted into CO2 and biomass under the O2 sufficient condition (21 %). Besides biomass and CO2, a high conversion efficiency of CH4-derived carbon to dissolved organic carbon was detected in the cultures, especially in LO-2. Quantitative PCR and Miseq sequencing both showed that the abundance of methanotroph increased with the increasing O2 concentrations. Type II methanotroph Methylocystis dominated in the enrichment cultures, accounting for 54.8, 48.1, and 36.9 % of the total bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing reads in HO, LO-1, and LO-2, respectively. Methylotrophs, mainly including Methylophilus, Methylovorus, Hyphomicrobium, and Methylobacillus, were also abundant in the cultures. Compared with the O2 sufficient condition (21 %), higher microbial biodiversity (i.e., higher Simpson and lower Shannon indexes) was detected in LO-2 enriched at the initial O2 concentration of 2.5 %. These findings indicated that compared with the O2 sufficient condition, more CH4-derived carbon was exuded into the environments and promoted the growth of non-methanotrophic microbes in O2-limiting environments.