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Bacterial and Archaeal Communities within an Ultraoligotrophic, High-altitude Lake in the Pre-Himalayas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

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Abstract

Puma Yumco Lake (PYL) is an ultraoligotrophic freshwater lake that sits an altitude of 5030 m within the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China. The bacterial and archaeal diversity of the lake remains poorly understood, despite their potential to inform on biogeochemical cycling and environment-microbial associations in these unique environments. Here, the bacterial and archaeal communities of PYL were investigated using high-throughput sequencing analysis of community 16S rRNA gene sequences. Further, the relationships among dominant taxa and environmental factors were comprehensively evaluated. Bacterial diversity comprised 31 phyla and 371 genera (10,645 operational taxonomic units [OTUs], Shannon index values of 5.21–6.16) and was significantly higher than that of Archaea (five phyla and 24 genera comprising 1141 OTUs and Shannon index values of 1.18–3.28). The bacterial communities were dominated by Proteobacteria (48.42–59.97% relative abundances), followed by Bacteroidetes (12.5–32.51%), Acidobacteria (2.07–11.56%), Firmicutes (0.65–6.32%), Planctomycetes (0.99–3.56%), Gemmatimonadetes (0.38–3.57%), Actinobacteria (1.67–3.52%), Verrucomicrobia (0.87–2.01%), and Chloroflexi (0.5–1.17%). In addition, archaeal communities were dominated by Thaumarchaeota (33.22–93.00%), followed by Euryarchaeota (2.89–35.47%), Woesearchaeota (0.99–31.04%), and Pacearchaeota (0.01–1.14%). The most abundant bacterial genus was Rhodoferax (5.73–26.62%) and the most abundant archaeal genus was the ammonia-oxidizing Nitrososphaera (29.18–91.46%). These results suggest that the Rhodoferax and Nitrososphaera are likely to participate in biogeochemical cycles in these environments through photoheterotrophy and nitrification, respectively. Taken together, these results provide valuable data for better understanding microbial interactions with each other and with these unique environments.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31760034, 31860030, and 21967018), the Key Research Foundation of Development and Transformation of Qinghai Province (2019SF121), the Applied Basic Research Program of Qinghai Province (2018ZJ778, 2018ZJ930Q, and 2020ZJ767), and the Team’s Research Program of Microbial Resources in Salt-lakes of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (2018KYT1). We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Research Center of Basic Medical Science, Medical College of Qinghai University, Xining, 810016, Qinghai, China

    Rong Wang, Qifu Long, Xiang Gao, Jiangwa Xing, Guoping Shen & Derui Zhu

  2. Qinghai Key Laboratory of Vegetable Genetics and Physiology, Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Qinghai University, Xining, 810016, Qinghai, China

    Rui Han

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Wang, R., Han, R., Long, Q. et al. Bacterial and Archaeal Communities within an Ultraoligotrophic, High-altitude Lake in the Pre-Himalayas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Indian J Microbiol 60, 363–373 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-020-00881-8

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