Microbial diversity in European alpine permafrost and active layers ...

• Main Authors: Frey, Beat, Rime, Thomas, Phillips, Marcia, Stierli, Beat, Hajdas, Irka, Widmer, Franco, Hartmann, Martin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2016
• Subjects: Alpine permafrost; Archaea; Bacteria; Eukarya; Illumina Miseq sequencing; Novel microbial diversity; Ribosomal markers; permafrost
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000114910; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/114910

Permafrost represents a largely understudied genetic resource. Thawing of permafrost with global warming will not only promote microbial carbon turnover with direct feedback on greenhouse gases, but also unlock an unknown microbial diversity. Pioneering metagenomic efforts have shed light on the permafrost microbiome in polar regions, but temperate mountain permafrost is largely understudied. We applied a unique experimental design coupled to high-throughput sequencing of ribosomal markers to characterize the microbiota at the long-term alpine permafrost study site ‘Muot-da-Barba-Peider’ in eastern Switzerland with an approximate radiocarbon age of 12 000 years. Compared to the active layers, the permafrost community was more diverse and enriched with members of the superphylum Patescibacteria (OD1, TM7, GN02 and OP11). These understudied phyla with no cultured representatives proposedly feature small streamlined genomes with reduced metabolic capabilities, adaptations to anaerobic fermentative metabolisms ... : FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 92 (3) ...