Microbial diversity in cold seep sediments from the northern South China Sea

South China Sea （SCS） is the largest Western Pacific marginal sea. However, microbial studies have never been performed in the cold seep sediments in the SCS. In 2004, ＂SONNE＂ 177 cruise found two cold seep areas with different water depth in the northern SCS. Haiyang 4 area, where the water depth is around 3000 m, has already been confirmed for active seeping on the seafloor, such as microbial mats, authigenic carbonate crusts and bivalves. We investigated microbial abundance and diver- sity in a 5.55-m sediment core collected from this cold seep area. An integrated approach was employed including geochemistry and 16S rRNA gene phylogenetic analyses. Here, we show that microbial abun- dance and diversity along with geochemistry profiles of the sediment core revealed a coupled reaction between sulphate reduction and methane oxidation. Acridine orange direct count results showed that microbial abundance ranges from 105 to 106 cells/g sediment （wet weight）. The depth-related variation of the abundance showed the same trend as the methane concentration profile. Phylogenetic analysis indicated the presence of sulphate-reducing bacteria and anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea. The diver- sity was much higher at the surface, but decreased sharply with depth in response to changes in the geochemical conditions of the sediments, such as methane, sulphate concentration and total organic carbon. Marine Benthic Group B, Chloroflexi and JS1 were predominant phylotypes of the archaeal and bacterial libraries, respectively.

Wide-field ophthalmic space-division multiplexing optical coherence tomography

High-speed ophthalmic optical coherence tomography(OCT)systems are of interest because they allow rapid,motion-free,and wide-field retinal imaging.Space-division multiplexing optical coherence tomography(SDMOCT)is a high-speed imaging technology that takes advantage of the long coherence length of micro electro mechanical vertical cavity surface emitting laser sources to multiplex multiple images along a single imaging depth.We demonstrate wide-field retinal OCT imaging,acquired at an effective A-scan rate of 800,000 A-scans/s with volumetric images covering up to 12.5 mm×7.4 mm on the retina and captured in less than 1 s.A clinical feasibility study was conducted to compare the ophthalmic SDM-OCT with commercial OCT systems,illustrating the high-speed capability of SDM-OCT in a clinical setting.