Rapid Microbial Dynamics in Response to an Induced Wetting Event in Antarctic Dry Valley Soils

Niederberger, Thomas D.; Bottos, Eric; Sohm, Jill A.; Gunderson, Troy; Parker, Alexander E.; Coyne, Kathryn J.; Capone, Douglas G.; Carpenter, Edward; Cary, S. Craig

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.00621

Cited by 23 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The similar observation was found in other extreme environments, e.g., Antarctic supraglacial habitats, high Alpine mountains, and Arctic soils (Boetius et al, 2015; Malard and Pearce, 2018). Inconsistently, in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Acidobacteria, and Actinobacteria dominated soil bacterial communities, which may be related to soil characteristics (Pointing et al, 2009; Niederberger et al, 2019). Gammaproteobacteria constituted a major fraction of Proteobacteria in this study, which also were often found in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice (Boetius et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Reconstruction of the Functional Ecosystem in the High Light, Low Temperature Union Glacier Region, Antarctica

Cha

Dang

et al. 2019

Front. Microbiol.

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Antarctica is covered by multiple larger glaciers with diverse extreme conditions. Microorganisms in Antarctic regions are primarily responsible for diverse biogeochemical processes. The identity and functionality of microorganisms from polar glaciers are defined. However, little is known about microbial communities from the high elevation glaciers. The Union Glacier, located in the inland of West Antarctica at 79°S, is a challenging environment for life to survive due to the high irradiance and low temperatures. Here, soil and rock samples were obtained from three high mountains (Rossman Cove, Charles Peak, and Elephant Head) adjacent to the Union Glacier. Using metagenomic analyses, the functional microbial ecosystem was analyzed through the reconstruction of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur metabolic pathways. A low biomass but diverse microbial community was found. Although archaea were detected, bacteria were dominant. Taxa responsible for carbon fixation were comprised of photoautotrophs (Cyanobacteria) and chemoautotrophs (mainly Alphaproteobacterial clades: Bradyrhizobium, Sphingopyxis, and Nitrobacter). The main nitrogen fixation taxa were Halothece (Cyanobacteria), Methyloversatilis, and Leptothrix (Betaproteobacteria). Diverse sulfide-oxidizing and sulfate-reducing bacteria, fermenters, denitrifying microbes, methanogens, and methane oxidizers were also found. Putative producers provide organic carbon and nitrogen for the growth of other heterotrophic microbes. In the biogeochemical pathways, assimilation and mineralization of organic compounds were the dominant processes. Besides, a range of metabolic pathways and genes related to high irradiance, low temperature and other stress adaptations were detected, which indicate that the microbial communities had adapted to and could survive in this harsh environment. These results provide a detailed perspective of the microbial functional ecology of the Union Glacier area and improve our understanding of linkages between microbial communities and biogeochemical cycling in high Antarctic ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Reconstruction of the Functional Ecosystem in the High Light, Low Temperature Union Glacier Region, Antarctica

Cha

Dang

et al. 2019

Front. Microbiol.

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“…The first expeditions and studies in Antarctica suggested that this territory as sterile and with limited microbial activity (Cameron et al, 1968). However, in the recent years a large number of studies have demonstrated a high diversity of microorganisms with structured trophic chains that form functional microbial communities (Cary et al, 2010;Teixeira et al, 2013;Niederberger et al, 2015Niederberger et al, , 2019Jorquera et al, 2016;Pudasaini et al, 2017;Durán et al, 2019). Over the years, a number of particular characteristics of Antarctic environment have been discussed and investigated.…”

Section: Extreme Microbiome To the Service Of Sustainable Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Natural Holobiome Engineering by Using Native Extreme Microbiome to Counteract the Climate Change Effects

Rodriguez

Durán

2020

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

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In the current scenario of climate change, the future of agriculture is uncertain. Climate change and climate-related disasters have a direct impact on biotic and abiotic factors that govern agroecosystems compromising the global food security. In the last decade, the advances in high throughput sequencing techniques have significantly improved our understanding about the composition, function and dynamics of plant microbiome. However, despite the microbiome have been proposed as a new platform for the next green revolution, our knowledge about the mechanisms that govern microbe-microbe and microbe-plant interactions are incipient. Currently, the adaptation of plants to environmental changes not only suggests that the plants can adapt or migrate, but also can interact with their surrounding microbial communities to alleviate different stresses by natural microbiome selection of specialized strains, phenomenon recently called "Cry for Help". From this way, plants have been co-evolved with their microbiota adapting to local environmental conditions to ensuring the survival of the entire holobiome to improve plant fitness. Thus, the strong selective pressure of native extreme microbiomes could represent a remarkable microbial niche of plant stress-amelioration to counteract the negative effect of climate change in food crops. Currently, the microbiome engineering has recently emerged as an alternative to modify and promote positive interactions between microorganisms and plants to improve plant fitness. In the present review, we discuss the possible use of extreme microbiome to alleviate different stresses in crop plants under the current scenario of climate change.

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“…However, there are still important questions which remain unanswered. Studies of Antarctic soil microbial composition, outside of manipulation experiments such as the addition of water [ 128 ], have been performed at single time points. Such experiments do not permit valid conclusions on how the microbial communities change over time.…”

Section: Gaps In Current Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils

et al. 2020

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The Antarctic continent is widely considered to be one of the most hostile biological habitats on Earth. Despite extreme environmental conditions, the ice-free areas of the continent, which constitute some 0.44% of the total continental land area, harbour substantial and diverse communities of macro-organisms and especially microorganisms, particularly in the more “hospitable” maritime regions. In the more extreme non-maritime regions, exemplified by the McMurdo Dry Valleys of South Victoria Land, nutrient cycling and ecosystem servicing processes in soils are largely driven by microbial communities. Nitrogen turnover is a cornerstone of ecosystem servicing. In Antarctic continental soils, specifically those lacking macrophytes, cold-active free-living diazotrophic microorganisms, particularly Cyanobacteria, are keystone taxa. The diazotrophs are complemented by heterotrophic bacterial and archaeal taxa which show the genetic capacity to perform elements of the entire N cycle, including nitrification processes such as the anammox reaction. Here, we review the current literature on nitrogen cycling genes, taxa, processes and rates from studies of Antarctic soils. In particular, we highlight the current gaps in our knowledge of the scale and contribution of these processes in south polar soils as critical data to underpin viable predictions of how such processes may alter under the impacts of future climate change.

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Rapid Microbial Dynamics in Response to an Induced Wetting Event in Antarctic Dry Valley Soils

Cited by 23 publications

References 73 publications

Reconstruction of the Functional Ecosystem in the High Light, Low Temperature Union Glacier Region, Antarctica

Reconstruction of the Functional Ecosystem in the High Light, Low Temperature Union Glacier Region, Antarctica

Natural Holobiome Engineering by Using Native Extreme Microbiome to Counteract the Climate Change Effects

Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils

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