Component characteristics of organic matter in hydrothermal barnacle shells from Southwest Indian Ridge
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Component characteristics of organic matter in hydrothermal barnacle shells from Southwest Indian Ridge HUANG Xin1,2, ZENG Zhigang1*, CHEN Shuai1, YIN Xuebo1, WANG Xiaoyuan1, ZHAO Huijing1,2, YANG Baoju1,2, RONG Kunbo1,2, MA Yao1,2 1
Key Laboratory of Marine Geology and Environment, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China 2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China Received 13 May 2013; accepted 4 August 2013 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract In 2008–2009, hydrothermal barnacle and sediment samples were collected from the Southwest Indian Ridge during a survey of the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (COMRA). Samples were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS), revealing the main organic constituents of hydrothermal barnacle and sediment to be fatty acids and alkylbenzenes. N-alkanes which possessed obvious even carbon advantage were also detected in hydrothermal sediment. The high concentrations of aromatic compounds might be the result of macromolecular thermal alteration. Microorganism in the submarine hydrothermal ecosystem, especially those related to sulfur metabolism, might be the source of the high concentrations of fatty acids detected in these samples. In high temperature and high pressure hydrothermal environments, n-alkanes which possessed obvious even carbon advantage might originate from thermal alteration of carboxylic acids and other lipid compounds. Key words: Southwest Indian Ridge, hydrothermal barnacle shell, hydrothermal sediment, organic matter Citation: Huang Xin, Zeng Zhigang, Chen Shuai, Yin Xuebo, Wang Xiaoyuan, Zhao Huijing, Yang Baoju, Rong Kunbo, Ma Yao. 2013. Component characteristics of organic matter in hydrothermal barnacle shells from Southwest Indian Ridge. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 32(12): 60–67, doi: 10.1007/s13131-013-0388-z
1 Introduction The origin of organic matter in geological environments remains a debate, although researchers began its study several centuries ago (Eremenko and Chilingar, 1996; Lein et al., 2003; Simoneit et al., 2004). Generally speaking, organic matter in geologic environments can be broadly attributed to three possible sources (McCollom and Seewald, 2007): biogenic compounds formed by biological organisms as part of their metabolic and biosynthetic activities, thermogenic compounds generated by thermal decomposition of living biomass or of biologically derived compounds that have undergone diagenetic processes (e.g., kerogen), and abiotic compounds that are formed by purely chemical processes with no participation of biological organisms. Since the discovery of hydrothermal systems, chemosynthetic bacteria have been investigated as a source of organic material in these extreme habitats (Simoneit et al., 1992a, b). Many researchers have carried out extensive research of organic matter in hydrothermal fluids (Simoneit et al., 2004; Konn et al., 2009, 2012), sulfides (Zhang et al., 2001; Lein et al., 2003; Li et
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