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Archaeal and bacterial diversity in hot springs on the Tibetan Plateau, China

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Abstract

The diversity of archaea and bacteria was investigated in ten hot springs (elevation >4600 m above sea level) in Central and Central-Eastern Tibet using 16S rRNA gene phylogenetic analysis. The temperature and pH of these hot springs were 26–81°C and close to neutral, respectively. A total of 959 (415 and 544 for bacteria and archaea, respectively) clone sequences were obtained. Phylogenetic analysis showed that bacteria were more diverse than archaea and that these clone sequences were classified into 82 bacterial and 41 archaeal operational taxonomic units (OTUs), respectively. The retrieved bacterial clones were mainly affiliated with four known groups (i.e., Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Chloroflexi), which were similar to those in other neutral-pH hot springs at low elevations. In contrast, most of the archaeal clones from the Tibetan hot springs were affiliated with Thaumarchaeota, a newly proposed archaeal phylum. The dominance of Thaumarchaeota in the archaeal community of the Tibetan hot springs appears to be unique, although the exact reasons are not yet known. Statistical analysis showed that diversity indices of both archaea and bacteria were not statistically correlated with temperature, which is consistent with previous studies.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States (OISE 0968421) and China (40972211, 41030211, and 41002123) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2010ZY16 and 2011YXL03). Three anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their constructive comments which greatly improved the quality of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Qiuyuan Huang & Hailiang Dong

  2. Badin High School, 571 Hamilton New London Road, Hamilton, OH, 45013, USA

    Christina Z. Dong & Raymond M. Dong

  3. State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Hongchen Jiang, Shang Wang & Hailiang Dong

  4. School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Genhou Wang, Xiaoxue Ding, Lu Niu & Xin Li

  5. School of Water Resources and Environment, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Bin Fang

  6. State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Chuanlun Zhang

  7. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Chuanlun Zhang

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  1. Qiuyuan Huang
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  2. Christina Z. Dong
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  4. Hongchen Jiang
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  5. Shang Wang
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  7. Bin Fang
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  10. Xin Li
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  11. Chuanlun Zhang
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Correspondence to Hongchen Jiang or Hailiang Dong.

Additional information

Communicated by M. da Costa.

Q. Huang and C. Z. Dong contributed equally to this work.

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Huang, Q., Dong, C.Z., Dong, R.M. et al. Archaeal and bacterial diversity in hot springs on the Tibetan Plateau, China. Extremophiles 15, 549 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-011-0386-z

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