深海热液区微生物群落与环境适应性机理

Abstract

The deep-sea hydrothermal vents are typical deep-sea high-temperature environments. The sharp physical and chemical gradients around the hydrothermal vents serve as energy sources for microorganisms living there, and support great biomass and productivity. As a result, deep-sea hydrothermal vents possess the most abundant microbial diversity on the Earth. Microorganisms living around the hydrothermal vents are faced with multiple environmental stresses, such as deep-sea high hydrostatic pressure, as well as fluctuations of temperature, pH, salinity, redox stage and so on. Because their physical and chemical characteristics are similar to those of early earth, hydrothermal vents are considered to be a potential candidate for the origin of life.Understanding the environmental adaptation, life boundary and evolution process of microorganisms living under the extreme conditions of deep-sea hydrothermal vents can help us realize how early life survive on the ancient Earth, which provides scientific cognition and theoretical foundation for exploring origin of life, revealing co-evolution of life and earth, and even investigating extraterritorial life. In the past four decades, studies on the deep-sea hydrothermal vents have produced a large number of research articles and reviews. Compared with previous reviews, this review is based on the new cognition due to developing techniques in A c c e p t e d https://engine.scichina.com/doi/10.1360/SSV-2021-0353deep-sea in-situ exploration and laboratory simulations. We systematically generalized recent cutting-edge researches, from macro to micro scales, in three aspects: formation and succession of the ecosystem in hydrothermal vent, formation of microbiological diversity, and environmental adaptation of microorganisms to the multiple extreme conditions. Besides focusing on the spatial scale, we also called on researchers to pay attention to the significance and impacts of time scales in research areas as mentioned above, with support from the new techniques.