Phylogenetic Profiling and Diversity of Bacterial Communities in the Death Valley, an Extreme Habitat in the Atacama Desert.

ABSTRACT: The Atacama Desert, one of the driest deserts in the world, represents a unique extreme environmental ecosystem to explore the bacterial diversity as it is considered to be at the dry limit for life. A 16S rRNA gene (spanning the hyper variable V3 region) library was constructed from an alkaline sample of unvegetated soil at the hyperarid margin in the Atacama Desert. A total of 244 clone sequences were used for MOTHUR analysis, which revealed 20 unique phylotypes or operational taxonomic units (OTUs). V3 region amplicons of the 16S rRNA were suitable for distinguishing the bacterial community to the genus and specie level. We found that all OTUs were affiliated with taxa representative of the Firmicutes phylum. The extremely high abundance of Firmicutes indicated that most bacteria in the

SUBMITTER: Piubeli F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4627947 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature