On July 27, 2025, Professor Meng Li’s group published a research paper titled “Magnetite drives microbial community restructuring and stimulates aceticlastic methanogenesis of type IIMethanosarcinain mangrove sediments” in Microbiome.
Mangrove wetlands are critical hotspots of methane emissions, yet the role of naturally occurring minerals magnetite in shaping their microbial communities and methanogenic processes is poorly understood. The current work investigated the effect of magnetite supplementation on methanogenic activity and community structure in microbial consortia from mangrove sediments. The addition of magnetite enhanced methanogenesis in microbial consortia from mangrove sediments over five serial transfers using lactate as the substrate. By integrating results of metabolic profiling, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, metagenome and metatranscriptome analyses, as well as strain isolation and validation, we confirmed that the addition of magnetite stimulated the enrichments of type II non-hydrogenotrophicMethanosarcinaand promoted their aceticlastic methanogenesis. Furthermore, metatranscriptomic analysis suggested that magnetite also enhanced hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis ofMethanomicrobialesin the mangrove consortia. The results offer a comprehensive insight into the complex interactions between magnetite and diverse methanogens in natural microbial communities, and provide a deeper understanding of their physiology of type IIMethanosarcina.
Professor Meng Li from IAS is the corresponding author, and associate researcher Dr. Jinjie Zhou from IAS is the first author. This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation,the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program, Shenzhen University 2035 Program for Excellent Research,and the research fund from Synthetic Biology Research Center of Shenzhen University.
Paper link:https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-025-02157-z
Figure 1. Magnetite drives microbial community restructuring and stimulates aceticlastic methanogenesis of type IIMethanosarcinain mangrove sediments
