Assessing the carbon assimilation and production of benthic archaeal lipid biomarkers using lipid-RIP

Distributional patterns of intact polar lipids (IPLs) suggest that archaea are abundant in marine subsurface sediments. However, the production of archaeal lipids remains largely unresolved. We performed a lipid radioisotope probing (lipid-RIP) experiment using 14C-bicarbonate and 2-14C-acetate with surface and methanogenic marine sediments from the Rhone delta (Mediterranean Sea) to investigate mechanisms of carbon assimilation and to assess...