Comparative metagenomics of eight geographically remote terrestrial hot springs

Peter Menzel, Sóley Ruth Islin, Anne Gunn Rike, Lianbing Lin, Qi Zhang, Patrizia Contursi, Marco Moracci, Jakob K Kristjansson, Benjamin Bolduc, Sergey Gavrilov, Nikolai Ravin, Andrey Mardanov, Elizaveta Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Mark Young, Anders Krogh, Xu Peng

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100 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Hot springs are natural habitats for thermophilic Archaea and Bacteria. In this paper, we present the metagenomic analysis of eight globally distributed terrestrial hot springs from China, Iceland, Italy, Russia, and the USA with a temperature range between 61 and 92 (∘)C and pH between 1.8 and 7. A comparison of the biodiversity and community composition generally showed a decrease in biodiversity with increasing temperature and decreasing pH. Another important factor shaping microbial diversity of the studied sites was the abundance of organic substrates. Several species of the Crenarchaeal order Thermoprotei were detected, whereas no single bacterial species was found in all samples, suggesting a better adaptation of certain archaeal species to different thermophilic environments. Two hot springs show high abundance of Acidithiobacillus, supporting the idea of a true thermophilic Acidithiobacillus species that can thrive in hyperthermophilic environments. Depending on the sample, up to 58 % of sequencing reads could not be assigned to a known phylum, reinforcing the fact that a large number of microorganisms in nature, including those thriving in hot environments remain to be isolated and characterized.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMicrobial Ecology
Volume70
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)411-424
Number of pages14
ISSN0095-3628
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

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