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Bacterial Adaptation to Hot and Dry Deserts

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Adaption of Microbial Life to Environmental Extremes

Abstract

The analysis of microbial diversity highlights the idea that tolerance of desiccation is more important than tolerance of temperature as an adaptive microbial trait for desert conditions. The culture-independent analysis of this microbial diversity in deserts revealed that 70–80 % of 16S-rDNA sequences do not match with described bacterial species, suggesting the presence of a majority of ‘new’ species and genera to be described and highlighting the necessity to make this biodiversity culturable, and for that we propose the use of the grain-by-grain cultivation as an efficient technique allowing the isolation of bacteria strongly attached to a sand grain surface. In Sahara samples, most of the bacterial isolates or clone sequences belong to phyla and genera for which the mechanisms of adaptation to desiccation have been described (sporulation in Firmicutes and Actinobacteria, DNA repair in Deinococcus) or remain to be unravelled (most Proteobacteria). A novel mechanism of desiccation tolerance was found for the betaproteobacterium Ramlibacter tataouinensis and involves the ability to divide as a desiccation-tolerant cyst. Surprisingly, the very low density of bacteria in desert sand is not due to a much lower diversity but to a very low number of bacteria per taxon. The main conclusion is that numerous bacterial species have been able to adapt in response to extreme conditions prevailing in hot and dry deserts.

The Moula-moula Bird

The Moula-moula bird is a wheatear of the desert. It is the only living soul that might enliven the desolation of volcanic areas with its two, black and white, clean-cut colours. I often used to follow it with my eyes, as it would tinkle its faint trill above the bald heights of the hillocks. It cannot stay still as its feet would get burned by the rock. The sun, which would elsewhere be life, here is devastating furnace.

Only, there is the Moula-moula bird to pour a note of freshness on the inferno. Its faint thrill furtively gives the illusion of greenness; it falls upon the ardent rocks as drops of dew. One only has to close one’s eyes and listen to the crystal shrill then one forgets this bare world reduced to its vertebral column and also forgets the surveying mineral world.

Tahar Djaout (1954–1993) L’invention du desert (Éditions du Seuil, 1987) Kindly translated from French by Gaëlle Catois

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Notes

  1. 1.

    French laboratories from Cadarache, Marseille, Orsay, and Rennes in collaboration with laboratories in Rabat (Morocco) and in El-Fjé-Medenine (Tunisia). This work was supported by the GEOMEX program grant from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

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Acknowledgments

We warmly thank Christopher SWEZEY (US Geological Survey), Frédéric MÉDAIL (Institut Méditerranéen d’Ecologie et de Paléoécologie, Université Paul Cézanne, Aix-Marseille III), and Mylène SALINI for comments and critical reading of the manuscript.

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Heulin, T. et al. (2017). Bacterial Adaptation to Hot and Dry Deserts. In: Stan-Lotter, H., Fendrihan, S. (eds) Adaption of Microbial Life to Environmental Extremes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48327-6_4

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