Hypolithic Microbial Community of Quartz Pavement in the High-Altitude Tundra of Central Tibet

• Published in: Microbial Ecology
• Main Authors: Wong, Fiona K. Y., Lacap, Donnabella C., Lau, Maggie C. Y., Aitchison, J. C., Cowan, Donald A., Pointing, Stephen B.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Springer-Verlag 2010
• Subjects: Environmental Microbiology; Tundra
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974210; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20336290; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9653-2

The hypolithic microbial community associated with quartz pavement at a high-altitude tundra location in central Tibet is described. A small-scale ecological survey indicated that 36% of quartz rocks were colonized. Community profiling using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism revealed no significant difference in community structure among a number of colonized rocks. Real-time quantitative PCR and phylogenetic analysis of environmental phylotypes obtained from clone libraries were used to elucidate community structure across all domains. The hypolithon was dominated by cyanobacterial phylotypes (73%) with relatively low frequencies of other bacterial phylotypes, largely represented by the chloroflexi, actinobacteria, and bacteriodetes. Unidentified crenarchaeal phylotypes accounted for 4% of recoverable phylotypes, while algae, fungi, and mosses were indicated by a small fraction of recoverable phylotypes.