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In this study, we examined the formation of MeHg in anaerobic incubations of sediment collected from the San Jacinto River estuary (Texas, USA) amended with aqueous Hg(0) to investigate the microbial communities involved in the conversion of Hg(0) to MeHg. The results show that the addition of the methanogen inhibitor 2-bromoethanesulfonate (BES) significantly decreased MeHg production. The mercury methylation gene, hgcA, was detected in these sediments using archaeal specific primers, and 16S rRNA sequencing showed that a member of the Methanosarcinaceae family of methanogens was active. These results suggest that methanogenic archaea play an underappreciated role in the production of MeHg in estuarine sediments contaminated with Hg(0).<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/femsle\/fnaa196","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,11,25]],"date-time":"2020-11-25T04:41:31Z","timestamp":1606279291000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":24,"title":["Production of methylmercury by methanogens in mercury contaminated estuarine sediments"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"367","author":[{"given":"Yuwei","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 14 College Farm Road, NJ 08901, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Spencer","family":"Roth","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 14 College Farm Road, NJ 08901, USA"},{"name":"Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, 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