St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Spatial variability of microbial communities and salt distributions across a latitudinal aridity gradient in the Atacama Desert

Thumbnail
View/Open
Shen_2021_ME_Salt_CC.pdf (1.391Mb)
Date
13/01/2021
Author
Shen, Jianxun
Wyness, Adam
Claire, Mark
Zerkle, Aubrey
Keywords
Atacama microbiome
Function prediction
Extremophiles
Osmotic stress
Salt amendments
GE Environmental Sciences
QR Microbiology
DAS
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
Over the past 150 million years, the Chilean Atacama Desert has been transformed into one of the most inhospitable landscapes by geophysical changes, which makes it an ideal Mars analog that has been explored for decades. However, a heavy rainfall that occurred in the Atacama in 2017 provides a unique opportunity to study the response of resident extremophiles to rapid environmental change associated with excessive water and salt shock. Here we combine mineral/salt composition measurements, amendment cell culture experiments, and next-generation sequencing analyses to study the variations in salts and microbial communities along a latitudinal aridity gradient of the Atacama Desert. In addition, we examine the reshuffling of Atacama microbiomes after the rainfall event. Analysis of microbial community composition revealed that soils within the southern arid desert were consistently dominated by Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, and Acidobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia. Intriguingly, the hyperarid microbial consortia exhibited a similar pattern to the more southern desert. Salts at the shallow subsurface were dissolved and leached down to a deeper layer, challenging indigenous microorganisms with the increasing osmotic stress. Microbial viability was found to change with aridity and rainfall events. This study sheds light on the structure of xerotolerant, halotolerant, and radioresistant microbiomes from the hyperarid northern desert to the less arid southern transition region, as well as their response to changes in water availability.
Citation
Shen , J , Wyness , A , Claire , M & Zerkle , A 2021 , ' Spatial variability of microbial communities and salt distributions across a latitudinal aridity gradient in the Atacama Desert ' , Microbial Ecology , vol. First Online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01672-w
Publication
Microbial Ecology
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01672-w
ISSN
0095-3628
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
This research was funded by European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement 678812) (to MWC) for 2017 sampling and various geochemical characterizations, and John Templeton Foundation (Grant Agreement 60501) (to AJW) for assistance with sequencing and bioinformatics. J.S. also acknowledges support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-020-01672-w#Sec15
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21268

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter