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Desert Biosignatures

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Microbial Ecosystems in Central Andes Extreme Environments

Abstract

This chapter describes the detection of molecular traces of life in endolithic microbial communities from the Preandean region of the Atacama Desert. There, the extreme aridity and solar irradiation reach the highest values found anywhere on Earth (including ultraviolet light) and create pressures on those phototrophic microorganisms, which have to cope with them. The biosynthesis of photosynthetic pigments and photoprotective biomolecules is an important component of the survival strategies of endolithic cyanobacteria and algae. They have to maintain a balance between light harvesting and protection against an excess of harmful irradiation. Raman spectroscopy, including Raman mapping, was combined with microscopic methods to detect such biosignatures in vivo within native specimens and to describe their spatial distribution within the rock. The nondestructive nature of Raman spectroscopic analysis allowed chemical information about these microbial biomolecules to be obtained while their spatial context within any particular microhabitat remained preserved. As a result, we observed spatial gradients of pigment composition (scytonemin, carotenoids, chlorophyll, and phycobilins) in cryptoendolithic, chasmoendolithic, and hypoendolithic habitats within the studied rock transects. Simultaneous information about the composition of the surrounding mineral matrix was also obtained during acquisition of the Raman images.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic within National Sustainability Program I (NPU I) grant number LO1415, INTER-COST grant number LTC18036 to P. Vítek, and grant number PGC2018-094076-B-I00 to all authors from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Spain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Vítek

  2. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    Jacek Wierzchos

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  1. Petr Vítek
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  2. Jacek Wierzchos
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Correspondence to Petr Vítek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. LIMLA-PROIMI-CONICET, Tucuman, Argentina

    María Eugenia Farías

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Vítek, P., Wierzchos, J. (2020). Desert Biosignatures. In: Farías, M. (eds) Microbial Ecosystems in Central Andes Extreme Environments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36192-1_5

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