Bacterial diversity in microbial mats and sediments from the Atacama Desert

DANIEL KURTH; DANIEL POIRE; ANA BEATRIZ FERNANDEZ; FERNANDO NOVOA; CECILIA RASUK; MANUEL CONTRERAS; MARIA EUGENIA FARIAS

MICROBIAL ECOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2016 vol. 71 p. 44 - 56

0095-3628

The Atacama Desert has extreme environmental conditions that allow thedevelopment of unique microbial communities. The present paper reportsthe bacterial diversity of microbial mats and sediments and its mineralogical components. Some physicochemical conditions of the watersurrounding these ecosystems have also been studied trying to determinetheir influence on the diversity of these communities. In that way, mats andsediments distributed among different hypersaline lakes located in salt flatsof the Atacama Desert were subjected to massive parallel sequencing of theV4 region of the 16S rRNA genes of Bacteria. A higher diversity insediment than in mat samples have been found. Lakes that harbor microbialmats have higher salinity than lakes where mats are absent. Proteobacteriaand/or Bacteroidetes are the major phyla represented in all samples. Aninteresting item is the finding of a low proportion or absence ofCyanobacteria sequences in the ecosystems studied, suggesting thepossibility that other groups may be playing an essential role as primaryproducers in these extreme environments. Additionally, the largeproportion of 16S rRNA gene sequences that could not be classified at thelevel of phylum indicates potential new phyla present in these ecosystems.