ArticleThe ISME journal2015
Dominance of sulfur-fueled iron oxide reduction in low-sulfate freshwater sediments.
Article in The ISME journal, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 236 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbial ecology of shallow groundwater ecosystems.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
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- Impact of pH and salinity fluctuations on oxidation of Fe(II) by nitrate-reducing microorganisms enriched from the reduced tidal sediment of an extreme acidic river (Río Tinto, Spain).FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Article
- Hydrogeological and geological partitioning of iron and sulfur cycling bacterial consortia in subsurface coal-based mine waters.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Article
- Cryptic sulfur cycling in the deep biosphere of ferruginous Lake Towuti, Indonesia.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Sulfur cycling likely obscures dynamic biologically-driven iron redox cycling in contemporary methane seep environments.Environmental microbiology reports · 2024Article
- N/S element transformation modulating lithospheric microbial communities by single-species manipulation.Microbiome · 2023Article
- Sulfate reduction accelerates groundwater arsenic contamination even in aquifers with abundant iron oxides.Nature water · 2023Article
- Generation and Physiology of Hydrogen Sulfide and Reactive Sulfur Species in Bacteria.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Ferrihydrite transformations in flooded paddy soils: rates, pathways, and product spatial distributions.Environmental science. Processes & impacts · 2022Article
- Article
- Reexamination of 2.5-Ga "whiff" of oxygen interval points to anoxic ocean before GOE.Science advances · 2022Article
- In situ arsenic immobilisation for coastal aquifers using stimulated iron cycling: Lab-based viability assessment.Applied geochemistry : journal of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry · 2022Article
- Dynamic sulfur-iron cycle promoted phosphorus mobilization in sediments driven by the algae decomposition.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2021Article
- Article
- Lithogenic hydrogen supports microbial primary production in subglacial and proglacial environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Hydrologic Alteration and Enhanced Microbial Reductive Dissolution of Fe(III) (hydr)oxides Under Flow Conditions in Fe(III)-Rich Rocks: Contribution to Cave-Forming Processes.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Article
- Active sulfur cycling in the terrestrial deep subsurface.The ISME journal · 2020Article
- Role of APS reductase in biogeochemical sulfur isotope fractionation.Nature communications · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A central tenant in microbial biogeochemistry is that microbial metabolisms follow a predictable sequence of terminal electron acceptors based on the energetic yield for the reaction. It is thereby oftentimes assumed that microbial respiration of ferric iron outcompetes sulfate in all but high-sulfate systems, and thus sulfide has little influence on freshwater or terrestrial iron cycling. Observations of sulfate reduction in low-sulfate environments have been attributed to the presumed presence of highly crystalline iron oxides allowing sulfate reduction to be more energetically favored. Here we identified the iron-reducing processes under low-sulfate conditions within columns containing freshwater sediments amended with structurally diverse iron oxides and fermentation products that fuel anaerobic respiration. We show that despite low sulfate concentrations and regardless of iron oxide substrate (ferrihydrite, Al-ferrihydrite, goethite, hematite), sulfidization was a dominant pathway in iron reduction. This process was mediated by (re)cycling of sulfur upon reaction of sulfide and iron oxides to support continued sulfur-based respiration--a cryptic sulfur cycle involving generation and consumption of sulfur intermediates. Although canonical iron respiration was not observed in the sediments amended with the more crystalline iron oxides, iron respiration did become dominant in the presence of ferrihydrite once sulfate was consumed. Thus, despite more favorable energetics, ferrihydrite reduction did not precede sulfate reduction and instead an inverse redox zonation was observed. These findings indicate that sulfur (re)cycling is a dominant force in iron cycling even in low-sulfate systems and in a manner difficult to predict using the classical thermodynamic ladder.
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