Metagenome sequencing of the microbial community of a solar saltern crystallizer pond at cáhuil lagoon, chile (original) (raw)

Distinctive Archaeal Composition of an Artisanal Crystallizer Pond and Functional Insights Into Salt-Saturated Hypersaline Environment Adaptation

Frontiers in microbiology, 2018

Hypersaline environments represent some of the most challenging settings for life on Earth. Extremely halophilic microorganisms have been selected to colonize and thrive in these extreme environments by virtue of a broad spectrum of adaptations to counter high salinity and osmotic stress. Although there is substantial data on microbial taxonomic diversity in these challenging ecosystems and their primary osmoadaptation mechanisms, less is known about how hypersaline environments shape the genomes of microbial inhabitants at the functional level. In this study, we analyzed the microbial communities in five ponds along the discontinuous salinity gradient from brackish to salt-saturated environments and sequenced the metagenome of the salt (halite) precipitation pond in the artisanal Cáhuil Solar Saltern system. We combined field measurements with spectrophotometric pigment analysis and flow cytometry to characterize the microbial ecology of the pond ecosystems, including primary produ...

Microbial Community Structure and the Persistence of Cyanobacterial Populations in Salt Crusts of the Hyperarid Atacama Desert from Genome-Resolved Metagenomics

Frontiers in microbiology, 2017

Although once thought to be devoid of biology, recent studies have identified salt deposits as oases for life in the hyperarid Atacama Desert. To examine spatial patterns of microbial species and key nutrient sources, we genomically characterized 26 salt crusts from three sites along a fog gradient. The communities are dominated by a large variety of Halobacteriales and Bacteroidetes, plus a few algal and Cyanobacterial species. CRISPR locus analysis suggests the distribution of a single Cyanobacterial population among all sites. This is in stark contrast to the extremely high sample specificity of most other community members. Only present at the highest moisture site is a genomically characterized Thermoplasmatales archaeon (Marine Group II) and six Nanohaloarchaea, one of which is represented by a complete genome. Parcubacteria (OD1) and Saccharibacteria (TM7), not previously reported from hypersaline environments, were found at low abundances. We found no indication of a N2 fixa...

Metagenomic Insights into the Uncultured Diversity and Physiology of Microbes in Four Hypersaline Soda Lake Brines

Frontiers in microbiology, 2016

Soda lakes are salt lakes with a naturally alkaline pH due to evaporative concentration of sodium carbonates in the absence of major divalent cations. Hypersaline soda brines harbor microbial communities with a high species- and strain-level archaeal diversity and a large proportion of still uncultured poly-extremophiles compared to neutral brines of similar salinities. We present the first "metagenomic snapshots" of microbial communities thriving in the brines of four shallow soda lakes from the Kulunda Steppe (Altai, Russia) covering a salinity range from 170 to 400 g/L. Both amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA fragments and direct metagenomic sequencing showed that the top-level taxa abundance was linked to the ambient salinity: Bacteroidetes, Alpha-, and Gamma-proteobacteria were dominant below a salinity of 250 g/L, Euryarchaeota at higher salinities. Within these taxa, amplicon sequences related to Halorubrum, Natrinema, Gracilimonas, purple non-sulfur bacteria (Rhizobia...

Characterization of the Microbial Population Inhabiting a Solar Saltern Pond of the Odiel Marshlands (SW Spain)

Marine drugs, 2018

The solar salterns located in the Odiel marshlands, in southwest Spain, are an excellent example of a hypersaline environment inhabited by microbial populations specialized in thriving under conditions of high salinity, which remains poorly explored. Traditional culture-dependent taxonomic studies have usually under-estimated the biodiversity in saline environments due to the difficulties that many of these species have to grow at laboratory conditions. Here we compare two molecular methods to profile the microbial population present in the Odiel saltern hypersaline water ponds (33% salinity). On the one hand, the construction and characterization of two clone PCR amplified-16S rRNA libraries, and on the other, a high throughput 16S rRNA sequencing approach based on the Illumina MiSeq platform. The results reveal that both methods are comparable for the estimation of major genera, although massive sequencing provides more information about the less abundant ones. The obtained data i...

Taxonomic Profiling of Microorganisms Inhabiting Two Solar Salterns that Produce High- and Low-Quality Salts

HAYATI Journal of Biosciences

The contribution of halophilic microorganisms to the quality of salts produced in solar salterns has recently been recognized but not clearly understood. Using metagenomic 16S rRNA gene sequencing approach, we showed the microbial composition difference between the Tuban crystallization pond (CP-Tuban) that produces low-quality salt and CP-Sampang as a representative solar saltern that yields high-quality salt. Dominant classes in both traditional salterns were represented by γ-proteobacteria and halobacteria that occurred at higher prevalence in CP-Sampang. Microbial taxa, including beneficial genera, in CP-Sampang were more diverse and abundant compared to CP-Tuban. Among 180 genus-level OTUs identified in CP-Sampang, 127 of them were considered unique due to their absence in CP-Tuban. Higher levels of dissolved oxygen (DO) and nutrient (phosphate, nitrate, and ammonia) in the seawater reservoir (SR) of Sampang may contribute to more diverse phytoplankton genera, which could suppo...