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Metabolic activity and bioweathering properties of yeasts isolated from different supraglacial environments of Antarctica and Himalaya

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Abstract

Yeasts have been frequently isolated from cold habitats, but their contribution to essential ecological processes such as the mineralization of organic matter in these environments is less known. Here, the diversity, metabolic capability, and extracellular enzyme profiles of yeasts from snow, blue ice and cryoconite hole environments from East Antarctica and cryoconite holes from a glacier in Western Himalaya were determined. Eighty-six yeast strains isolated were affiliated to the genera Glaciozyma, Goffeauzyma, Mrakia, Phenoliferia, and Rhodotorula. Variations in the abundance, diversity, physiological properties, extracellular enzyme and carbon substrate utilization patterns of the isolated yeasts, reflect the specific environmental conditions from which they were isolated. Overall, 20–90% of the yeasts across all habitat types and geographical locations produced extracellular enzymes to degrade proteins, esters, carbohydrates, pectin, cellulose, lignin, and tannin. About 10 and 29% of the yeasts also exhibited ability to solubilize rock-minerals like phosphate and silicate, respectively. Additionally, selected isolates were able to metabolize 28–93% of the carbon substrates comprising different compound classes on Biolog YT plates. Overall, the ability of yeasts to use diverse organic compounds prevalent on the glacier surface, points to their ecological significance in the decomposition of organic matter, cycling of nutrients, and in the weathering of minerals in supraglacial environments. Moreover, their wide metabolic capabilities suggest that they can colonize new niches and environments when meltwater export during the summer that enables links with surrounding ecosystems.

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The ITS region and D1/D2 domain of the 26S rRNA gene sequence data generated from this study have been submitted to the NCBI database.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Ministry of Earth Science (India) for funding this work under ‘PACER - Cryosphere and Climate’ project and the Director, NCPOR, for support. We acknowledge the help of Ashish Paiguinkar and Lavkush Patel for sample collection from Himalaya and Archana Dayal for field assistance in Antarctica. Additionally, we acknowledge the help provided by Ashish Paiguinkar for conducting the analysis using the total organic carbon analyzer and ion chromatography. Thanks to K. Mahalinganathan for preparation of maps for this study. We would like to thank to Dr. Rahul Mohan for extending the facility of polarizing bright field microscope. This is NCPOR contribution number J-76/2020-21.

Funding

The study was funded by Ministry of Earth Science (India) under ‘PACER - Cryosphere and Climate’ project.

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  1. Preethika Ganesan

    Present address: Department of Food Science, School of Chemical Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Headland Sada, Vasco da Gama, Goa, 403804, India

    Aritri Sanyal, Runa Antony & Meloth Thamban

  2. Department of Applied Microbiology, School of Bioscience and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, 632014, India

    Preethika Ganesan

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The study was conceived by RA and AS. Samples used for this study was collected by RA. AS and PG conducted the wet lab analysis. AS and RA wrote the paper, with inputs from MT.

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Correspondence to Aritri Sanyal.

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Sanyal, A., Antony, R., Ganesan, P. et al. Metabolic activity and bioweathering properties of yeasts isolated from different supraglacial environments of Antarctica and Himalaya. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 113, 2243–2258 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-020-01496-1

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