Articles | Volume 17, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-649-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-649-2020
Research article
 | 
07 Feb 2020
Research article |  | 07 Feb 2020

Sterol preservation in hypersaline microbial mats

Yan Shen, Volker Thiel, Pablo Suarez-Gonzalez, Sebastiaan W. Rampen, and Joachim Reitner

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AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
ED: Reconsider after major revisions (21 Aug 2019) by Marcel van der Meer
AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (26 Nov 2019)  Author's response
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Dec 2019) by Marcel van der Meer
RR by Rienk Smittenberg (13 Dec 2019)
ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (13 Dec 2019) by Marcel van der Meer
AR by Yan Shen on behalf of the Authors (20 Dec 2019)  Author's response    Manuscript
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Short summary
Today, sterols are widespread in plants, animals, and fungi but are almost absent in the oldest rocks. Microbial mats, representing the earliest complex ecosystems on Earth, were omnipresent in Precambrian marine environments and may have degraded the sterols at that time. Here we analyze the distribution of sterols through a microbial mat. This provides insight into how variations in biological and nonbiological factors affect the preservation of sterols in modern and ancient microbial mats.
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