A halophilic bacterium inhabiting the warm, CaCl2-rich brine of the perennially ice-covered Lake Vanda, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica.

ABSTRACT: Lake Vanda is a perennially ice-covered and stratified lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. The lake develops a distinct chemocline at about a 50-m depth, where the waters transition from cool, oxic, and fresh to warm, sulfidic, and hypersaline. The bottom water brine is unique, as the highly chaotropic salts CaCl2 and MgCl2 predominate, and CaCl2 levels are the highest of those in any known microbial habitat. Enrichment techniques were used to isolate 15 strains of heterotrophic bacteria from the Lake Vanda brine. Despite direct supplementation of the brine samples with different organic substrates in primary enrichments, the same organism, a relative of the halophilic bacterium Halomonas (Gammaproteobacteria), was isolated from all depths sampled. The Lake Vanda (VAN) strains wer

SUBMITTER: Tregoning GS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4345359 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature