Bacterial biodiversity from Roopkund Glacier, Himalayan mountain ranges, India

Abstract

The bacterial diversity of two soil samples collected from the periphery of the Roopkund glacial lake and one soil sample from the surface of the Roopkund Glacier in the Himalayan ranges was determined by constructing three 16S rRNA gene clone libraries. The three clone libraries yielded a total of 798 clones belonging to 25 classes. Actinobacteria was the most predominant class (>10% of the clones) in the three libraries. In the library from the glacial soil, class Betaproteobacteria (24.2%) was the most predominant. The rarefaction analysis indicated coverage of 43.4 and 41.2% in the samples collected from the periphery of the lake thus indicating a limited bacterial diversity covered; at the same time, the coverage of 98.4% in the glacier sample indicated most of the diversity was covered. Further, the bacterial diversity in the Roopkund glacier soil was low, but was comparable with the bacterial diversity of a few other glaciers. The results of principal component analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene clone library data, percentages of OTUs and biogeochemical data revealed that the lake soil samples were different from the glacier soil sample and the biogeochemical properties affected the diversity of microbial communities in the soil samples.

Bacterial diversity of Drass, cold desert in Western Himalaya, and its comparison with Antarctic and Arctic

“…Earlier studies on Himalayas (Pradhan et al 2010;Shivaji et al 2011) reported Firmicutes as the abundant phylum contrary to the present study. Negligible reads detected in Arctic subsamples is in accordance with Chu et al (2010) who classified Firmicutes as the rarer phyla in Arctic soil.…”

“…This photosynthetic phylum is either reported to be present in low frequency or absent in the Himalayan regions (Pradhan et al 2010;Shivaji et al 2011;Stres et al 2014). Gemmatimonadetes and Verrucomicrobia found in the present study were reported from other cold habitats, though at a low frequency (Steven et al 2007;Wagner et al 2009;Pradhan et al 2010;Wu et al 2012). The core phyla obtained in the present study have also been reported from other cold habitats.…”

“…Cyanobacteria are the predominant biota in cold polar environments and play an important role in the carbon and nitrogen economy of tundra and polar desert soils (Bonilla et al 2005;Adams et al 2006;Vincent 2007;Varin et al 2012). This photosynthetic phylum is either reported to be present in low frequency or absent in the Himalayan regions (Pradhan et al 2010;Shivaji et al 2011;Stres et al 2014). Gemmatimonadetes and Verrucomicrobia found in the present study were reported from other cold habitats, though at a low frequency (Steven et al 2007;Wagner et al 2009;Pradhan et al 2010;Wu et al 2012).…”

“…Acidobacteria have been reported from the Tibetan plateau glacier, China, Mount Everest, Nepal, John Evans glacier, Canada Bench Glacier, Alaska, Schirmacher Oasis soil and Antarctic Siberian tundra soil samples (Zhou et al 1997, Shivaji et al 2004Skidmore et al2005;Cheng and Foght 2007;Liu et al 2009;Campbell et al 2010;Wu et al 2012;Kim et al 2014). Proteobacteria have been reported to be the dominant in the cold soils of the Himalayan mountains (Pradhan et al 2010;Shivaji et al 2011; Malan ice core drilled from the Tibetan Plateau (Xiang et al 2004); surface sediment from the Arctic Ocean (Xuezheng et al 2014); High-Arctic snow over sea ice (Moller et al 2013) and Antarctic samples (Tytgat et al 2014). The dominant Order Myxococcales of Deltaproteobacteria detected in Drass have been reported in Siberia, Arctic.…”

“…Bacteroidetes has been reported as one of the abundant phyla from cold habitats (Wu et al 2012;Moller et al 2013). Actinobacteria reported to be the abundant phyla in cold habitats (Wu et al 2012;Tytgat et al 2014) and predominant phyla in Roopkund glacier, Himalayas (Pradhan et al 2010).…”