Project: Characterization of microbial communities and carbon metabolisms within interstitial fluids of the Nankai Trough

Overview and Expected data products: In April 2016, IODP Expedition returned to Site C0010 to collect the borehole instrument package known as the Genius Plug, which was installed in 2010 within the megasplay fault zone of Hole C0010A. The instrument package included a Flow Through Osmo Colonization System (FLOCS), which was designed to draw up interstitial water, hypothesized to be mixed with deeper fluids traveling up and along the splay fault. The FLOCS held various minerals for in situ colonization, including barite, olivine, and sediment from Hole C0040.  The Genius Plug instrument package represents the first deployment of FLOCS technology into a sediment setting (previously only used within crustal environments or at the seafloor). Therefore it was our hypothesis that the FLOCS technology would successfully draw up interstitial water from the sedimentary environment and that the fluids would successfully inoculate the substrates within the FLOCS. Thus, the biological objectives of this expedition were to retrieve the FLOCS and to utilize the colonization substrates to culture subsurface microbes. We also hypothesized that enrichment cultures inoculated with FLOCS substrates would be different from each other and those inoculated with cored sediment from nearby holes. Thus, once the substrates were retrieved they were immediately used inoculate seawater media on board the Chikyu.

Sample archiving:Isolated cultures will be maintained in Dr. Carr’s laboratory as working stocks, frozen with glycerol.  Requests for working stocks will be obliged after official descriptions have been published, or after two calendar years of isolation, whichever comes first. Raw data describing growth will also made available upon request. Genomic data will ultimately achieved with the NCBI’s short read achieve.

IODP expedition 365

U.S. Science support program (OCE-1450528) - Post-Expedition Activity (PEA) award (subaward 16(GG009393-01))