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Bacterial Community Structure of Two Cold Sulfur Springs in Slovakia (Central Europe)

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Abstract

Sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, especially those from hot springs, have attracted the attention of microbiologists for more than 150 years. In contrast, the microbial diversity of cold sulfur springs remains largely unrecognized. Culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches were used to study the diversity of sulfur-oxidizing bacterial communities in two cold sulfur springs in Slovakia. Geological conditions and resulting spring water chemistry appear to be major factors influencing the composition of the sulfur-oxidizing bacterial community. Bacterial communities in both springs were found to be dominated by Proteobacteria with Epsilonproteobacteria being prevalent in the high-salinity Stankovany spring and Alpha- and Gammaproteobacteria in the low-salinity Jovsa spring. Limited overlap was found between culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches with multiple taxa of cultivated sulfur-oxidizing bacteria not being detected by the culture-independent metagenomics approach. Moreover, four cultivated bacterial isolates could represent novel taxa based on the low similarity of their 16S rRNA gene sequence (similarity lower than 98%) to sequences of known bacteria. Our study supports the current view that multiple approaches are required to assess the bacterial diversity in natural habitats and indicates that sulfur springs in Slovakia harbor unique, yet-undescribed microorganisms.

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Data Availability

All 16S rRNA sequences were deposited to Genbank under the accession numbers OP420118-OP420127. The metagenomic sequence reads are available on Sequence Read Archive database under the BioProject accession numbers PRJNA877066 and PRJNA877070.

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Not applicable.

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Funding

This work was supported by Pavol Jozef Safarik University Grant No. VVGS-PF-2021-1745.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, Srobarova 2, 041 54, Kosice, Slovakia

    Lea Nosalova, Jana Kiskova, Maria Piknova & Peter Pristas

  2. Associated Tissue Bank, Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, Trieda SNP 1, 040 11, Kosice, Slovakia

    Livia Kolesar Fecskeova

  3. Institute of Animal Physiology, Centre of Biosciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Soltesovej 4-6, 040 01, Kosice, Slovakia

    Peter Pristas

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  1. Lea Nosalova
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  2. Jana Kiskova
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Contributions

PP and LKF conceived and designed the analysis. LN collected the data. PP, JK, LN contributed to materials, data or analysis tools. LKF, JK, and LN performed the analyses. JK and LN interpreted the results. LN wrote the paper. MP, PP, and LN edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Maria Piknova.

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Nosalova, L., Kiskova, J., Fecskeova, L.K. et al. Bacterial Community Structure of Two Cold Sulfur Springs in Slovakia (Central Europe). Curr Microbiol 80, 145 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-023-03251-x

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