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The Santa Pola saltern as a model for studying the microbiota of hypersaline environments

  • Special Issue: Review
  • 10th International Congress on Extremophiles
  • Published:
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Abstract

Multi-pond salterns constitute an excellent model for the study of the microbial diversity and ecology of hypersaline environments, showing a wide range of salt concentrations, from seawater to salt saturation. Accumulated studies on the Santa Pola (Alicante, Spain) multi-pond solar saltern during the last 35 years include culture-dependent and culture-independent molecular methods and metagenomics more recently. These approaches have permitted to determine in depth the microbial diversity of the ponds with intermediate salinities (from 10 % salts) up to salt saturation, with haloarchaea and bacteria as the two main dominant groups. In this review, we describe the main results obtained using the different methodologies, the most relevant contributions for understanding the ecology of these extreme environments and the future perspectives for such studies.

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Acknowledgments

The research of the authors was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CGL2013-46941-P, CGL2010-19303, CGL2009-12651-C02-01 and BIO2011-12879-E), MAGYK (BIO2008-02444), MICROGEN (Programa CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 CDS2009-00006), National Science Foundation (Grant DEB-0919290), MaCuMBA Project 311975 of the European Commission FP7, the Generalitat Valenciana (DIMEGEN PROMETEO/2010/089 and ACOMP/2009/155) and the Junta de Andalucía (P10-CVI-6226). FEDER funds and the Plan Andaluz de Investigación also supported this research. We thank Juan Luis Ribas and Asunción Fernández, from the Microscopy Service of CITIUS (General Research Services, University of Sevilla, Spain) for technical assistance. Maria Jose León and Ana Beatriz Fernández were recipients of postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships, respectively, from the Junta de Andalucía.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sevilla, 41012, Sevilla, Spain

    Antonio Ventosa, Ana Beatriz Fernández, María José León & Cristina Sánchez-Porro

  2. Evolutionary Genomics Group, Departamento de Producción Vegetal y Microbiología, Universidad Miguel Hernández, San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Francisco Rodriguez-Valera

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  1. Antonio Ventosa
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  2. Ana Beatriz Fernández
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  3. María José León
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  4. Cristina Sánchez-Porro
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  5. Francisco Rodriguez-Valera
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Correspondence to Antonio Ventosa.

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Communicated by A. Oren.

This article is part of a special issue based on the 10th International Congress on Extremophiles held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, September 7–11, 2014.

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Ventosa, A., Fernández, A.B., León, M.J. et al. The Santa Pola saltern as a model for studying the microbiota of hypersaline environments. Extremophiles 18, 811–824 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-014-0681-6

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