Terrestrial plant biomarkers and their carbon isotopes provide insights into carbon cycling,
paleovegetation and paleoclimate, ranging in scale from local to global. Over the past …

Glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) lipids are membrane lipids which were long
thought to be synthesized mainly by archaea, organisms thought to be limited to extreme …

For years, microbiologists characterized the Archaea as obligate extremophiles that thrive in
environments too harsh for other organisms. The limited physiological diversity among …

Nitrification, the microbial oxidation of ammonia to nitrite and nitrate, occurs in a wide variety
of environments and plays a central role in the global nitrogen cycle. Catalyzed by the …

The discovery of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), now generally recognized to exert
primary control over ammonia oxidation in terrestrial, marine, and geothermal habitats …

Archaea constitute a considerable fraction of the microbial biomass on Earth. Like Bacteria
they have evolved a variety of energy metabolisms using organic and/or inorganic electron …

The burial of organic matter (OM) in marine sediments represents the major link between
“active” surface pools of carbon in the oceans, atmosphere, on land, and in marine …

Organisms capable of autotrophic metabolism assimilate inorganic carbon into organic
carbon. They form an integral part of ecosystems by making an otherwise unavailable form …

Ammonia oxidation, as the first step in the nitrification process, plays a central role in the
global cycling of nitrogen. Although bacteria are traditionally considered to be responsible …

Microbial activities drive the global nitrogen cycle, and in the past few years, our
understanding of nitrogen cycling processes and the micro-organisms that mediate them …