Prof. Meng Li recently published an article titled “Genomic and transcriptomic insights into the ecology and metabolism of benthic archaeal cosmopolitan, Thermoprofundales(MBG-D archaea)” in the ISME Journal to explain the new progress in ecological distribution and physiological metabolism of sediment archaea. Prof. Meng Li is the communication author and Dr. Zhichao Zhou is the first author, Shenzhen University as the first completion and communication unit.  

Archaea, as an important component of microorganisms, plays an extremely important role in the evolution of life on earth and MBG-D archaea is one of the most abundant and active archaea groups in Marine sediments and also the crucial component in Marine carbon cycle. Prof. Meng Li’s group, in collaboration with Prof. Jidong Guo from the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Hong Kong and Prof. Karen Lloyd from the University of Tennessee, analyze the global ecological distribution of MBG-D archaea using techniques such as metagenomics, macrotranscripts and bioinformatics, and obtained several high-quality genomes from Marine sediments. This study confirmed for the first time that MBG-D Archaea is a new item belonging to archaea, named Thermoprofundales (Fig. 1) and also found that MBG-D Archaea has the potential to degrade organic matter, immobilize inorganic carbon, produce acetic acid and ethanol, etc. The results of this study made a great different to the understanding of the classification and ecological functions of Marine uncultured archaea.    

This work was supported by the grants from Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Education of Guangdong Province, the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen and Shenzhen Peacock Technological Innovation Project.  

MBG-D Archaea is confirmed as a new item(Thermoprofundales) of archaea