Magmatism, serpentinization and life: Insights through drilling the Atlantis Massif (IODP Expedition 357)

Früh-Green, Gretchen L.; Orcutt, Beth N.; Rouméjon, S.; Lilley, Marvin D.; Morono, Yuki; Cotterill, C.; Green, Sophie M.; Escartı́n, J.; John, Barbara E.; McCaig, A. M.; Cannat, Mathilde; Ménez, Bénédicte; Schwarzenbach, Esther M.; Williams, Morgan; Morgan, Sally; Lang, Susan Q.; Schrenk, M. O.; Brazelton, William J.; Akizawa, Norikatsu; Boschi, Chiara; Dunkel, Kristina G.; Quéméneur, Marianne; Whattam, Scott A.; Mayhew, L. E.; Harris, Michelle; Bayrakci, Gaye; Behrmann, Jan H.; Herrero‐Bervera, Emilio; Hesse, K.; Liu, Hai Quan; Ratnayake, Amila Sandaruwan; Twing, Katrina I.; Weis, Dominique; Zhao, Rui; Bilenker, Laura

doi:10.1016/j.lithos.2018.09.012

Cited by 61 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Sequencing of environmental DNA from seafloor rocks is challenging due to their very low biomass and their abundance of minerals (e.g. phyllosilicates) that inhibit Many precautions were taken during handling of the rock core samples to minimize, eliminate, and detect contamination, and our results agree with previous reports that these efforts were generally successful (20,59,60).…”

Section: Serpentinite Samples Have Minimal Environmental Contaminationsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…would not expect to find the same biofilm communities of the Lost City in the basement rocks of the Atlantis Massif, where hydrothermal circulation is much more diffuse compared to the high flux through Lost City chimneys. Furthermore, the sample in Figure 6A was obtained from borehole M0075A, which exhibited low levels of H 2 compared to other Expedition 357 boreholes (20).…”

Section: Putative Inhabitants Of the Serpentinite Subsurfacementioning

confidence: 98%

“…International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 357 addressed this knowledge gap by targeting the Atlantis Massif, a submarine mountain located in the north Atlantic Ocean on the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (20,21). The massif is approximately 16 km across and rises 4,267 m from the seafloor.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Microbial Residents of the Atlantis Massif’s Shallow Serpentinite Subsurface

Motamedi

Orcutt

Früh-Green

et al. 2020

Appl Environ Microbiol

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The Atlantis Massif rises 4,000 m above the seafloor near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and consists of rocks uplifted from Earth’s lower crust and upper mantle. Exposure of the mantle rocks to seawater leads to their alteration into serpentinites. These aqueous geochemical reactions, collectively known as the process of serpentinization, are exothermic and are associated with the release of hydrogen gas (H2), methane (CH4), and small organic molecules. The biological consequences of this flux of energy and organic compounds from the Atlantis Massif were explored by International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 357, which used seabed drills to collect continuous sequences of shallow (<16 m below seafloor) marine serpentinites and mafic assemblages. Here, we report the census of microbial diversity in samples of the drill cores, as measured by environmental 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The problem of contamination of subsurface samples was a primary concern during all stages of this project, starting from the initial study design, continuing to the collection of samples from the seafloor, handling the samples shipboard and in the lab, preparing the samples for DNA extraction, and analyzing the DNA sequence data. To distinguish endemic microbial taxa of serpentinite subsurface rocks from seawater residents and other potential contaminants, the distributions of individual 16S rRNA gene sequences among all samples were evaluated, taking into consideration both presence/absence and relative abundances. Our results highlight a few candidate residents of the shallow serpentinite subsurface, including uncultured representatives of the Thermoplasmata, Acidobacteria, Acidimicrobia, and Chloroflexi. IMPORTANCE The International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 357—“Serpentinization and Life”—utilized seabed drills to collect rocks from the oceanic crust. The recovered rock cores represent the shallow serpentinite subsurface of the Atlantis Massif, where reactions between uplifted mantle rocks and water, collectively known as serpentinization, produce environmental conditions that can stimulate biological activity and are thought to be analogous to environments that were prevalent on the early Earth and perhaps other planets. The methodology and results of this project have implications for life detection experiments, including sample return missions, and provide a window into the diversity of microbial communities inhabiting subseafloor serpentinites.

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Section: Serpentinite Samples Have Minimal Environmental Contaminationsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Putative Inhabitants Of the Serpentinite Subsurfacementioning

confidence: 98%

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Microbial Residents of the Atlantis Massif’s Shallow Serpentinite Subsurface

Motamedi

Orcutt

Früh-Green

et al. 2020

Appl Environ Microbiol

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“…Expedition 357 (2015) collected samples of ultramafic crust from an ocean core complex on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to examine microbial life associated with serpentinization (Früh-Green et al, 2017). So far, results from this expedition have documented very low biomass in these shallow ultramafic samples from an actively serpentinizing system, in contrast to the elevated density of life in highly altered samples from the nearby Lost City hydrothermal vent field (Früh-Green et al, 2018). Expedition 360 (2016) collected gabbro from the lower oceanic crust at the Southwest Indian Ridge, where initial measurements indicated microbial life in many of the samples (MacLeod et al, 2017).…”

Section: The Composition and Origin Of Subseafloor Crustal Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

IODP Advances in the Understanding of Subseafloor Life

D'Hondt¹,

Inagaki²,

Orcutt³

et al. 2019

Oceanog

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“…In order to test the above‐mentioned hypothesis, we measured the anisotropic physical properties of four mafic and four ultramafic samples drilled in the central dome and the southern wall of the Atlantis Massif at 30°N along the Mid‐Atlantic Ridge (IODP Expedition 304‐305; Blackman et al, , and 357; Früh‐Green et al, , ). Ultrasonic P and S wave velocities, the anisotropic electrical resistivity, and the permeability of the rock samples were measured simultaneously, under differential pressures of up to 45 MPa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anisotropic Physical Properties of Mafic and Ultramafic Rocks From an Oceanic Core Complex

Bayrakci

Falcón-Suarez

Minshull

et al. 2018

Geochem Geophys Geosyst

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We analyzed the physical properties of altered mafic and ultramafic rocks drilled at the Atlantis Massif (Mid‐Atlantic Ridge, 30°N; Integrated Ocean Discovery Program Expeditions 304‐305 and 357). Our objective was to find a physical property that allows direct distinction between these lithologies using remote geophysical methods. Our data set includes the density, the porosity, P and S wave velocities, the electrical resistivity, and the permeability of mafic and ultramafic samples under shallow subsurface conditions (confining pressure up to 50 MPa equivalent to ~2‐km depth). In shallow subsurface conditions, mafic and ultramafic samples showed distinct differences in the density, the seismic wave velocities, and the electrical resistivity (mafic samples: 2,840 to 2,860 kg/m3, 5.92 to 6.70 km/s, and 60 to 221 Ω m; ultramafic samples: 2,370 to 2,790 kg/m3, 3.36 and 3.62 km/s, and 8 to 44 Ω m). However, we observed an overlap between physical properties of mafic and ultramafic rocks when we compared our measurements with those acquired from similar environments. The anisotropic homogeneous electrical resistivity inversion shows transverse isotropy symmetry, which is typical of a foliated microstructure. In both the inversion results and the thin sections, the direction of high resistivity axes of ultramafic rock samples is systematically perpendicular to the equivalent axes in mafic rock samples analyzed in this study. Our sample scale study suggests that electrical resistivity anisotropy may allow us to distinguish mafic and ultramafic lithologies via controlled source electromagnetic surveys. When surface conduction is negligible, the electrical resistivity can be used as proxy for permeability.

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Magmatism, serpentinization and life: Insights through drilling the Atlantis Massif (IODP Expedition 357)

Cited by 61 publications

References 65 publications

Microbial Residents of the Atlantis Massif’s Shallow Serpentinite Subsurface

Microbial Residents of the Atlantis Massif’s Shallow Serpentinite Subsurface

IODP Advances in the Understanding of Subseafloor Life

Anisotropic Physical Properties of Mafic and Ultramafic Rocks From an Oceanic Core Complex

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