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Phylogenetic Profiling and Diversity of Bacterial Communities in the Death Valley, an Extreme Habitat in the Atacama Desert

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Abstract

The Atacama Desert, one of the driest deserts in the world, represents a unique extreme environmental ecosystem to explore the bacterial diversity as it is considered to be at the dry limit for life. A 16S rRNA gene (spanning the hyper variable V3 region) library was constructed from an alkaline sample of unvegetated soil at the hyperarid margin in the Atacama Desert. A total of 244 clone sequences were used for MOTHUR analysis, which revealed 20 unique phylotypes or operational taxonomic units (OTUs). V3 region amplicons of the 16S rRNA were suitable for distinguishing the bacterial community to the genus and specie level. We found that all OTUs were affiliated with taxa representative of the Firmicutes phylum. The extremely high abundance of Firmicutes indicated that most bacteria in the soil were spore-forming survivors. In this study we detected a narrower diversity as compared to other ecological studies performed in other areas of the Atacama Desert. The reported genera were Oceanobacillus (representing the 69.5 % of the clones sequenced), Bacillus, Thalassobacillus and Virgibacillus. The present work shows physical and chemical parameters have a prominent impact on the microbial community structure. It constitutes an example of the communities adapted to live in extreme conditions caused by dryness and metal concentrations .

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Junta de Andalucía (P08-RMN-3515 and P11-CVI-7427 MO). We are grateful to Adolfo Crespo for the support in sampling collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics and Evolution (DGE), UFSCar, Via Washington Luis, Km. 235, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Francine Piubeli, Luciano Takeshi Kishi & Flavio Henrique-Silva

  2. Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Seville, C/Profesor García González, 2, 41012, Seville, Spain

    Francine Piubeli, María de Lourdes Moreno, María Teresa García & Encarnación Mellado

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  1. Francine Piubeli
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  2. María de Lourdes Moreno
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  3. Luciano Takeshi Kishi
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  5. María Teresa García
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Correspondence to María de Lourdes Moreno.

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Piubeli, F., de Lourdes Moreno, M., Kishi, L.T. et al. Phylogenetic Profiling and Diversity of Bacterial Communities in the Death Valley, an Extreme Habitat in the Atacama Desert. Indian J Microbiol 55, 392–399 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-015-0539-3

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