A shared core microbiome in soda lakes separated by large distances.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Zorz JK
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6748926 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Soda-saline lakes are a special type of alkaline lake in which the chloride concentration is greater than the carbonate/bicarbonate concentration. Due to the high pH and a usually higher osmotic pressure than that of a normal soda lake, the microbes may need more energy to thrive in such a double-extreme environment. In this study, we systematically investigated the microbiome of the brine and sediment samples of nine artificially separated ponds (salinities from 5.5% to saturation) within two soda-saline lakes in Inner Mongolia of China, assisted by deep metagenomic sequencing. The main inorganic ions shaped the microbial community in both the brines and sediments, and the chloride concentration exhibited the most significant effect. A total of 385 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) were generated, in which 38 MAGs were revealed as the abundant species in at least one of the eighteen different samples. Interestingly, these abundant species also represented the most branches of the microbiome of the soda-saline lakes at the phylum level. These abundant taxa were close relatives of microorganisms from classic soda lakes and neutral saline environments, but forming a combination of both habitats. Notably, approximately half of the abundant MAGs had the potential to drive dissimilatory sulfur cycling. These MAGs included four autotrophic Ectothiorhodospiraceae MAGs, one Cyanobacteria MAG and nine heterotrophic MAGs with the potential to oxidize sulfur, as well as four abundant MAGs containing genes for elemental sulfur respiration. The possible reason is that reductive sulfur compounds could provide additional energy for the related species, and reductions of oxidative sulfur compounds are more prone to occur under alkaline conditions which support the sulfur cycling. In addition, a unique 1,4-alpha-glucan phosphorylation pathway, but not a normal hydrolysis one, was found in the abundant Candidatus Nanohaloarchaeota MAG NHA-1, which would produce more energy in polysaccharide degradation. In summary, this work has revealed the abundant taxa and favorable pathways in the soda-saline lakes, indicating that efficient energy regeneration pathway may increase the capacity for environmental adaptation in such saline-alkaline environments. These findings may help to elucidate the relationship between microbial metabolism and adaptation to extreme environments.
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Project description:Soda lakes are saline and alkaline ecosystems that are believed to have existed throughout the geological record of Earth. They are widely distributed across the globe, but are highly abundant in terrestrial biomes such as deserts and steppes and in geologically interesting regions such as the East African Rift valley. The unusual geochemistry of these lakes supports the growth of an impressive array of microorganisms that are of ecological and economic importance. Haloalkaliphilic Bacteria and Archaea belonging to all major trophic groups have been described from many soda lakes, including lakes with exceptionally high levels of heavy metals. Lonar Lake is a soda lake that is centered at an unusual meteorite impact structure in the Deccan basalts in India and its key physicochemical and microbiological characteristics are highlighted in this article. The occurrence of diverse functional groups of microbes, such as methanogens, methanotrophs, phototrophs, denitrifiers, sulfur oxidizers, sulfate reducers and syntrophs in soda lakes, suggests that these habitats harbor complex microbial food webs that (a) interconnect various biological cycles via redox coupling and (b) impact on the production and consumption of greenhouse gases. Soda lake microorganisms harbor several biotechnologically relevant enzymes and biomolecules (for example, cellulases, amylases, ectoine) and there is the need to augment bioprospecting efforts in soda lake environments with new integrated approaches. Importantly, some saline and alkaline lake ecosystems around the world need to be protected from anthropogenic pressures that threaten their long-term existence.
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Project description:Soda lakes are unique environments in terms of their physical characteristics and the biology they harbour. Although well studied with respect to their microbial composition, their viral compositions have not, and consequently few bacteriophages that infect bacteria from haloalkaline environments have been described.Bacteria were isolated from sediment samples of lakes Magadi and Shala. Three phages were isolated on two different Bacillus species and one Paracoccus species using agar overlays. The growth characteristics of each phage in its host was investigated and the genome sequences determined and analysed by comparison with known phages.Phage Shbh1 belongs to the family Myoviridae while Mgbh1 and Shpa belong to the Siphoviridae family. Tetranucleotide usage frequencies and G?+?C content suggests that Shbh1 and Mgbh1 do not regularly infect, and have therefore not evolved with, the hosts they were isolated on here. Shbh1 was shown capable of infecting two different Bacillus species from the two different lakes demonstrating its potential broad-host range. Comparative analysis of their genome sequence with known phages revealed that, although novel, Shbh1 does share substantial amino acid similarity with previously described Bacillus infecting phages (Grass, phiNIT1 and phiAGATE) and belongs to the Bastille group, while Mgbh1 and Shpa are highly novel.The addition of these phages to current databases should help with metagenome/metavirome annotation efforts. We describe a highly novel Paracoccus infecting virus (Shpa) which together with Ngo?6 and vB_PmaS_IMEP1 is one of only three phages known to infect Paracoccus species but does not show similarity to these phages.
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Project description:Carotenoids are protective pigments present in many aquatic organisms that reduce the photooxidative stress induced by short-wavelenght solar radiation, yet increase their susceptibility to predators. Arctodiaptomus spinosus, a calanoid copepod typically found in many fishless shallow soda lakes, shows large between-lake differences in pigmentation. Here, we attribute these differences to the environmental state of these ecosystems, namely, 'dark water' lakes with submersed vegetation and turbid 'white' lakes lacking macrophytes. Copepod carotenoid concentration in the turbid 'white' lakes was significantly (about 20-fold) higher than in the 'dark water' ones, although the latter systems were characterized by higher transparency. In addition, males had on a dry weight basis around three times higher carotenoid concentrations than females. Mycosporine-like amino acids (direct UV screening substances) were found in all cases, but in low concentration. The environmental conditions in these ecosystems were largely shaped by the presence/absence of submersed macrophytes Thus, in the turbid lakes, the strong wind-driven mixis allows for copepods to be brought to the surface and being exposed to solar radiation, whereas in 'dark water' ones, macrophytes reduce water turbulence and additionally provide shelter. Our results explain the counter-intuitive notion of strong red pigmentation in copepods from a turbid ecosystem and suggest that factors other than high UV transparency favor carotenoid accumulation in zooplankton.
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Project description:A radioisotope method was devised to study bacterial respiratory reduction of arsenate in sediments. The following two arsenic-rich soda lakes in California were chosen for comparison on the basis of their different salinities: Mono Lake (approximately 90 g/liter) and Searles Lake (approximately 340 g/liter). Profiles of arsenate reduction and sulfate reduction were constructed for both lakes. Reduction of [73As]arsenate occurred at all depth intervals in the cores from Mono Lake (rate constant [k] = 0.103 to 0.04 h(-1)) and Searles Lake (k = 0.012 to 0.002 h(-1)), and the highest activities occurred in the top sections of each core. In contrast, [35S]sulfate reduction was measurable in Mono Lake (k = 7.6 x10(4) to 3.2 x 10(-6) h(-1)) but not in Searles Lake. Sediment DNA was extracted, PCR amplified, and separated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) to obtain phylogenetic markers (i.e., 16S rRNA genes) and a partial functional gene for dissimilatory arsenate reduction (arrA). The amplified arrA gene product showed a similar trend in both lakes; the signal was strongest in surface sediments and decreased to undetectable levels deeper in the sediments. More arrA gene signal was observed in Mono Lake and was detectable at a greater depth, despite the higher arsenate reduction activity observed in Searles Lake. A partial sequence (about 900 bp) was obtained for a clone (SLAS-3) that matched the dominant DGGE band found in deeper parts of the Searles Lake sample (below 3 cm), and this clone was found to be closely related to SLAS-1, a novel extremophilic arsenate respirer previously cultivated from Searles Lake.
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Project description:Thiocyanate is a C1 compound containing carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. It is a (by)product in a number of natural and industrial processes. Because thiocyanate is toxic to many organisms, including humans, its removal from industrial waste streams is an important problem. Although a number of bacteria can use thiocyanate as a nitrogen source, only a few can use it as an electron donor. There are two distinct pathways to use thiocyanate: (i) the "carbonyl sulfide pathway," which has been extensively studied, and (ii) the "cyanate pathway," whose key enzyme, thiocyanate dehydrogenase, was recently purified and studied. Three species of Thioalkalivibrio, a group of haloalkaliphilic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria isolated from soda lakes, have been described as thiocyanate oxidizers: (i) Thioalkalivibrio paradoxus ("cyanate pathway"), (ii) Thioalkalivibrio thiocyanoxidans ("cyanate pathway") and (iii) Thioalkalivibrio thiocyanodenitrificans ("carbonyl sulfide pathway"). In this study we provide a comparative genome analysis of these described thiocyanate oxidizers, with genomes ranging in size from 2.5 to 3.8 million base pairs. While focusing on thiocyanate degradation, we also analyzed the differences in sulfur, carbon, and nitrogen metabolism. We found that the thiocyanate dehydrogenase gene is present in 10 different Thioalkalivibrio strains, in two distinct genomic contexts/genotypes. The first genotype is defined by having genes for flavocytochrome c sulfide dehydrogenase upstream from the thiocyanate dehydrogenase operon (present in two strains including the type strain of Tv. paradoxus), whereas in the second genotype these genes are located downstream, together with two additional genes of unknown function (present in eight strains, including the type strains of Tv. thiocyanoxidans). Additionally, we found differences in the presence/absence of genes for various sulfur oxidation pathways, such as sulfide:quinone oxidoreductase, dissimilatory sulfite reductase, and sulfite dehydrogenase. One strain (Tv. thiocyanodenitrificans) lacks genes encoding a carbon concentrating mechanism and none of the investigated genomes were shown to contain known bicarbonate transporters. This study gives insight into the genomic variation of thiocyanate oxidizing bacteria and may lead to improvements in the application of these organisms in the bioremediation of industrial waste streams.
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Project description:Soda lakes are intriguing ecosystems harboring extremely productive microbial communities in spite of their extreme environmental conditions. This makes them valuable model systems for studying the connection between community structure and abiotic parameters such as pH and salinity. For the first time, we apply high-throughput sequencing to accurately estimate phylogenetic richness and composition in five soda lakes, located in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. The lakes were selected for their contrasting pH, salinities and stratification and several depths or spatial positions were covered in each lake. DNA was extracted and analyzed from all lakes at various depths and RNA extracted from two of the lakes, analyzed using both amplicon- and shotgun sequencing. We reveal a surprisingly high biodiversity in all of the studied lakes, similar to that of freshwater lakes. Interestingly, diversity appeared uncorrelated or positively correlated to pH and salinity, with the most "extreme" lakes showing the highest richness. Together, pH, dissolved oxygen, sodium- and potassium concentration explained approximately 30% of the compositional variation between samples. A diversity of prokaryotic and eukaryotic taxa could be identified, including several putatively involved in carbon-, sulfur- or nitrogen cycling. Key processes like methane oxidation, ammonia oxidation and 'nitrifier denitrification' were also confirmed by mRNA transcript analyses.
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Project description:We describe a hitherto unrecognized bacterial community, inhabiting the leaf surfaces of the salt-excreting desert tree Tamarix. High temperatures, strong radiation, and very low humidity dictate a daytime existence in complete desiccation, but damp nights allow the microbial population to proliferate in a sugar-rich, alkaline, and hypersaline solution, before drying up again after sunrise. The exclusively bacterial population contains many undescribed species and genera, but nevertheless appears to be characterized by relatively limited species diversity. Sequences of 16S rRNA genes from either isolates or total community DNA place the identified members of the community in five bacterial groups (Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, alpha-, and gamma-Proteobacteria); in each of these, they concentrate in a very narrow branch that in most cases harbors organisms isolated from unrelated halophilic environments.
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Project description:Soda lakes are naturally occurring highly alkaline and saline environments. Although the sulfur cycle is one of the most active element cycles in these lakes, little is known about the sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). In this study we investigated the diversity, activity, and abundance of SRB in sediment samples and enrichment cultures from a range of (hyper)saline soda lakes of the Kulunda Steppe in southeastern Siberia in Russia. For this purpose, a polyphasic approach was used, including denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of dsr gene fragments, sulfate reduction rate measurements, serial dilutions, and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). Comparative sequence analysis revealed the presence of several novel clusters of SRB, mostly affiliated with members of the order Desulfovibrionales and family Desulfobacteraceae. We detected sulfate reducers and observed substantial sulfate reducing rates (between 12 and 423 micromol/dm(3) day(-1)) for most lakes, even at a salinity of 475 g/liter. Enrichments were obtained at salt saturating conditions (4 M Na(+)), using H(2) or volatile fatty acids as electron donors, and an extremely halophilic SRB, strain ASO3-1, was isolated. Furthermore, a high dsr gene copy number of 10(8) cells per ml was detected in a hypersaline lake by qPCR. Our results indicate the presence of diverse and active SRB communities in these extreme ecosystems.
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