Comparison of Archaeal Populations in Soil and Their Encapsulated Iron-Manganese Nodules in Four Locations Spanning from North to South China

Abstract

To characterize the archaeal community composition in soil originating iron-manganese nodules, four types of soils—brown soil, yellow-cinnamon soil, yellow brown soil and red soil—and their associated iron-manganese nodules were collected from Queyu (QY), Zaoyang (ZY), Wuhan (WH) and Guiyang (GY), China, respectively, and subjected to quantitative polymerase chain reaction, cloning and sequencing analyses. The results showed that the archaeal 16S rRNA gene copy numbers in nodules, ranging between 3.59 × 102 and 4.17 × 103 copies g−1 dry nodule, were about 50–1000 times lower than those in their corresponding soils (1.87 × 105 to 1.08 × 106 copies g−1 dry soil), correlating with the low organ..