Abstract
Sedimentary environments in the Arctic are known to harbor diverse microbial communities playing a crucial role in the remineralization of organic matter and associated biogeochemical cycles. In this study, we used a combination of culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches to understanding the bacterial community composition associated with the sediments of a terrestrial versus fjord system in the Svalbard Arctic. Community-level metabolic profiling and growth response of retrieved bacterial isolates towards different carbon substrates at varying temperatures were also studied to assess the metabolic response of communities and isolates in the system. Bacterial species belonging to Cryobacterium and Psychrobacter dominated the terrestrial and fjord sediment retrievable fraction. Amplicon sequencing analysis revealed higher bacterial diversity in the terrestrial sediments (Shannon index; 8.135 and 7.935) as compared to the fjord sediments (4.5–5.37). Phylum Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated both terrestrial and fjord sediments. Phylum Verrucomicrobia and Cyanobacteria were abundant in terrestrial sediments while Epsilonbacteraeota and Fusobacteriia dominated the fjord sediments. Significant differences were observed in the carbon substrate utilization profiles between the terrestrial and fjord sediments at both 4 °C and 20 °C incubations (p < 0.005). Utilization of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, D-mannitol and Tween-80 by the sediment communities and bacterial isolates from both systems, irrespective of their temperature incubations implies the affinity of bacteria for such substrates as energy sources and for their survival in cold environments. Our results suggest the ability of sediment bacterial communities to adjust their substrate utilization profiles according to condition changes in the ecosystems and are found to be less influenced by their phylogenetic relatedness.
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Data availability
The raw nucleotide sequences generated for this study can be found in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database under the SRA accession number: PRJNA475645. The 16S rRNA gene sequences (104 sequences) obtained from the cultivation-dependent study are available in GenBank under the accession numbers MN080149-MN080222, MT309496-MT309525.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Director, National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences, India for his support and interest in this work. Thanks are due to colleagues at the Cryobiology laboratory at NCPOR, School of Environmental Sciences at M.G.University, and Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies for their support. This is NCPOR contribution number- J-13/2021-22.
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FAT and KPK designed the research plan and methodology. The formal analysis was carried out by FAT and MM. Bioinformatics analysis and statistical analysis of data were done by FAT. FAT wrote the manuscript under the supervision of KPK. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
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Thomas, F.A., Mohan, M. & Krishnan, K.P. Bacterial diversity and their metabolic profiles in the sedimentary environments of Ny-Ålesund, Arctic. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 114, 1339–1360 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-021-01604-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-021-01604-9