CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The Andean Microbial Ecosystems Associated with Minerals (EMAM) are associations of bacteria, cyanobacteria and Haloarchaea that inﬂuence or induce the precipitation of minerals in lagoons, hydrothermal vents, fumaroles of volcanoes and Puna salares. They include microbial mats, microbialites,biofilms and endoevaporites. Those in the Puna are the highest described so far and due to the extremeconditions that give rise to altitude (high UV radiation, low O2 pressure, abrupt temperature changes,oligotrophy, etc.) these ecosystems are the most similar to the primitive Earth that is known in the planet. The general objective of this work is to characterize microbial ecosystems of different high altitudelagoons (Ojos de campo, Pozo Bravo, and a fumarola near the Diamond Lagoon) from the province ofCatamarca, Argentina, including microbial mats and microbialites of sites not previously studied. DNAisolation of the samples were performed using different protocols, including CTAB, methods used forsaline sediments, and kits for processing microbial mats (MoBIO). Subsequently a DNA quality analysiswas performed by electrophoresis and UV absorption spectroscopy. The success of the methods employed was confrmed by PCR reactions with oligonucleotides to amplify the 16S rDNA gene (F27 andR1492). Amplicons libraries from the V4 region of the 16S rDNA gene, using the Bakt-341F and Bakt_805R oligonucleotides were constructed. These libraries were sequenced on the Illumina platform.Diversity data by 16S rDNA were analyzed using the QIIME software. This analysis allowed to defne thebiodiversity of the microbial ecosystems under study. The results indicate the presence of archaea andbacteria in these samples. A comparison of the study environments with other Puna environments previously analyzed shows that they are grouped with other microbial mats, differentiating them from othermicrobial communities with structures such as evaporites, but a clear difference is not seen with themicrobialites. Some specifc groups are more abundant in evaporite mats, such as the genus Salinivibrio.Microbial mats are divided into two classes. In the first group, there are abundant Alphaproteobacteriaof the family Rhodobacteraceae and Gammaproteobacteria of the family Marinicellaceae, whereas inthe second group there are important Deltaproteobacteria of the family Desulfobacteraceae. This workrepresents a new contribution to the bioprospecting of Andean Puna environments, and will help toselect sites for further exploration.

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