Prokaryotic Community Diversity Along an Increasing Salt Gradient in a Soda Ash Concentration Pond

Abstract

The effect of salinity on prokaryotic community diversity in Abijata-Shalla Soda Ash Concentration Pond system was investigated by using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene 454 pyrosequencing. Surface water and brine samples from five sites spanning a salinity range of 3.4 % (Lake Abijata) to 32 % (SP230F, crystallizer pond) were analyzed. Overall, 33 prokaryotic phyla were detected, and the dominant prokaryotic phyla accounted for more than 95 % of the reads consisting of Planctomycetes, Bacteroidetes, candidate division TM7, Deinococcus-Thermus, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Euryarchaeota. Diversity indices indicated that operational taxonomic unit (OTU) richness decreases drastically with increasing salinity in the pond system. A total of 471 OTUs were found at 3.4 % salinity whereas 49 OTUs were detected in pond SP211 (25 % salinity), and only 19 OTUs in the crystallization pond at 32 % salinity (SP230F). Along the salinity gradient, archaeal community gradually replaced bacterial community. Thus, archaeal community accounted for 0.4 % in Lake Abijata while 99.0 % in pond SP230F. This study demonstrates that salinity appears to be the key environmental parameter in structuring the prokaryotic communities of haloalkaline environments. Further, it confirmed that the prokaryotic diversity in Lake Abijata is high and it harbors taxa with low or no phylogenetic similarities to existing prokaryotic taxa and thus represents novel microorganisms.

A glimpse of the prokaryotic diversity of the Large Aral Sea reveals novel extremophilic bacterial and archaeal groups

“…Hypersaline ecosystems such as salt lakes are distributed globally, but differ from each other in terms of salt concentration and chemical composition as determined by local geological characteristics (de la Haba, Sánchez‐Porro, Marquez, & Ventosa, ; Naghoni et al, ; Simachew, Lanzen, Gessesse, & Øvreas, ; Tazi, Breakwell, Harker, & Crandall, ). In addition to being hypersaline, these ecosystems are often characterized by other environmental extremes such as high alkalinity, low oxygen concentration and high UV irradiation (Edwardson & Hollibaugh, ; Fernandez et al, ; Javor, ; Naghoni et al, ).…”

“…Typical Archaea found in salt lakes belong to phylum Euryarchaeota (mainly representatives from Halobacteria class) in addition to some methanogens (Abdallah et al, ; Oren et al, ; Zhang et al, ). It was shown that as salinity increases, Archaea tend to dominate over Bacteria (Simachew et al, ).…”

Abundant Taxa and Favorable Pathways in the Microbiome of Soda-Saline Lakes in Inner Mongolia

“…1 and 2, Table S4), from which a number of haloalkaliphilic microorganisms have been isolated (3,7,20). The pH value, carbonate/bicarbonate concentrations and salinity appear to be of importance in shaping the prokaryotic communities in salt lakes (45,46).…”

Determination Of Prokaryotic Diversity Of Salda Lake By Next Generation Sequencing Method

“…Tuzluluğun yüksek olduğu yerlerde ise Euryarchaeota üyeleri baskındır (Vavourakis et al, 2016). 16S rRNA klon kütüphanesi temelli önceki kültür bağımsız çalışmalarda da tuzlu soda göllerinden Euryarchaeota rapor edilmiştir (Grant et al, 1999;Simachew et al, 2016). Duckworth et al, 1996'da, Doğu Afrika soda göllerinden Archaeae domaininden Natronococcus ve Natronobacterium, Bacteria domaininden ise Halomonas, Bacillus ve Arthrobacter gibi alkalifilik bakterileri izole etmiştir.…”