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While most oxygenic phototrophs harvest light only in the visible range (400-700 nm, VIS), anoxygenic phototrophs can harvest near infrared light (> 700 nm, NIR). To study interactions between the photosynthetic guilds we used microsensors to measure oxygen and gross oxygenic photosynthesis (gOP) in a hypersaline microbial mat under full (VIS + NIR) and VIS illumination. Under normal dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) concentrations (2 mM), volumetric rates of gOP were reduced up to 65% and areal rates by 16-31% at full compared with VIS illumination. This effect was enhanced (reduction up to 100% in volumetric, 50% in areal rates of gOP) when DIC was lowered to 1 mM, but diminished at 10 mM DIC or lowered pH. In conclusion, under full-light illumination anoxygenic phototrophs are able to reduce the activity of oxygenic phototrophs by efficiently competing for inorganic carbon within the highly oxygenated layer. Anoxygenic photosynthesis, calculated from the difference in gOP under full and VIS illumination, represented between 10% and 40% of the C-fixation. The DIC depletion in the euphotic zone as well as the significant C-fixation by anoxygenic phototrophs in the oxic layer influences the carbon isotopic composition of the mat, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting isotopic biosignals in geological records., (© 2012 Society for Applied Microbiology and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The effect of variations in H2 concentrations on methanogenesis from the non-competitive substrates methanol and methylamine (used by methanogens but not by sulfate reducers) was investigated in methanogenic marine sediments. Imposed variations in sulfate concentration and temperature were used to drive systematic variations in pore water H2 concentrations. Specifically, increasing sulfate concentrations and decreasing temperatures both resulted in decreasing H2 concentrations. The ratio of CO2 and CH4 produced from 14C-labelled methylamine and methanol showed a direct correlation with the H2 concentration, independent of the treatment, with lower H2 concentrations resulting in a shift towards CO2. We conclude that this correlation is driven by production of H2 by methylotrophic methanogens, followed by loss to the environment with a magnitude dependent on the extracellular H2 concentrations maintained by hydrogenotrophic methanogens (in the case of the temperature experiment) or sulfate reducers (in the case of the sulfate experiment). Under sulfate-free conditions, the loss of reducing power as H2 flux out of the cell represents a loss of energy for the methylotrophic methanogens while, in the presence of sulfate, it results in a favourable free energy yield. Thus, hydrogen leakage might conceivably be beneficial for methanogens in marine sediments dominated by sulfate reduction. In low-sulfate systems such as methanogenic marine or freshwater sediments it is clearly detrimental--an adverse consequence of possessing a hydrogenase that is subject to externally imposed control by pore water H2 concentrations. H2 leakage in methanogens may explain the apparent exclusion of acetoclastic methanogenesis in sediments dominated by sulfate reduction.