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Variation with depth of the abundance, diversity and pigmentation of culturable bacteria in a deep ice core from the Yuzhufeng Glacier, Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

It has been suggested that the cryosphere is a new biome uniquely dominated by microorganisms, although the ecological characteristics of these cold-adapted bacteria are not well understood. We investigated the vertical variation with depth of the proportion of pigmented bacteria recovered from an ice core drilled in the Yuzhufeng Glacier, Tibetan Plateau. A total of 25,449 colonies were obtained from 1250 ice core sections. Colonies grew on only one-third of the inoculated Petri dishes, indicating that although the ice core harbored abundant culturable bacteria, bacteria could not be isolated from every section. Four phyla and 19 genera were obtained; Proteobacteria formed the dominant cluster, followed by Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. The proportion of pigmented bacteria increased with depth from 79 to 95% and yellow-colored colonies predominated throughout the ice core, making up 47% of all the colonies. Pigments including α- and β-carotene, diatoxanthin, peridinin, zea/lutein, butanoyloxy, fucoxanthin and fucoxanthin were detected in representative colonies with α-carotene being the dominant carotenoid. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest resolution study of culturable bacteria in a deep ice core reported to date.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 41701085, 41425004 and 41371084) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant no. 2016M590140). Professor John Hodgkiss of The University of Hong Kong is thanked for his help with our English.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Liang Shen, Yongqin Liu, Baiqing Xu & Xiaobo Liu

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, China

    Liang Shen, Yongqin Liu, Ninglian Wang & Baiqing Xu

  3. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yongqin Liu

  4. Shanxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface System and Environmental Carrying Capacity, Northwest University, Xi’an, China

    Ninglian Wang

  5. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Nianzhi Jiao

  6. Kathmandu Center for Research and Education, CAS-TU, Beijing, China

    Xiaobo Liu

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  1. Liang Shen
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  2. Yongqin Liu
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  4. Nianzhi Jiao
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Correspondence to Yongqin Liu.

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Communicated by A. Oren.

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Shen, L., Liu, Y., Wang, N. et al. Variation with depth of the abundance, diversity and pigmentation of culturable bacteria in a deep ice core from the Yuzhufeng Glacier, Tibetan Plateau. Extremophiles 22, 29–38 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-017-0973-8

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