4.7 Article

Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert

期刊

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
卷 12, 期 1, 页码 -

出版社

NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-23437-w

关键词

-

资金

  1. NASA [80NSSC19K0470, NNX15AP18G]
  2. Space Telescope Science Institute's Director's Discretionary Fund [D0001.82413]

向作者/读者索取更多资源

This study investigated the adaptation mechanisms of extremophilic microbial communities in the Atacama Desert to extreme environmental conditions. The findings suggest that opportunistic salt-in strategists take over the halite communities at the driest sites, benefiting from newly released compounds by the death of microorganisms least adapted to the new conditions. These observations provide valuable information on microbial community adaptations and resilience to climate change.
The adaptation mechanisms of microbial communities to natural perturbations remain unexplored, particularly in extreme environments. The extremophilic communities of halite (NaCl) nodules from the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert are self-sustained and represent a unique opportunity to study functional adaptations and community dynamics with changing environmental conditions. We transplanted halite nodules to different sites in the desert and investigated how their taxonomic, cellular, and biochemical changes correlated with water availability, using environmental data modeling and metagenomic analyses. Salt-in strategists, mainly represented by haloarchaea, significantly increased in relative abundance at sites characterized by extreme dryness, multiple wet/dry cycles, and colder conditions. The functional analysis of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) revealed site-specific enrichments in archaeal MAGs encoding for the uptake of various compatible solutes and for glycerol utilization. These findings suggest that opportunistic salt-in strategists took over the halite communities at the driest sites. They most likely benefited from compounds newly released in the environment by the death of microorganisms least adapted to the new conditions. The observed changes were consistent with the need to maximize cellular bioenergetics when confronted with lower water availability and higher salinity, providing valuable information on microbial community adaptations and resilience to climate change.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.7
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据