Community transcriptomics reveals unexpected high microbial diversity in acidophilic biofilm communities.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental question in microbial ecology relates to community structure, and how this varies across environment types. It is widely believed that some environments, such as those at very low pH, host simple communities based on the low number of taxa, possibly due to the extreme environmental conditions. However, most analyses of species richness have relied on methods that provide relatively low ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sampling depth. Here we used community transcriptomics to analyze the microbial diversity of natural acid mine drainage biofilms from the Richmond Mine at Iron Mountain, California. Our analyses target deep pools of rRNA gene transcripts recovered from both natural and laboratory-grown biofilms across varying developmental stages. In all, 91.8% of the ∼ 254 million Illumina

SUBMITTER: Aliaga Goltsman DS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4817702 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature