Leave no stone unturned: individually adapted xerotolerant Thaumarchaeota sheltered below the boulders of the Atacama Desert hyperarid core.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert is an extremely harsh environment thought to be colonized by only a few heterotrophic bacterial species. Current concepts for understanding this extreme ecosystem are mainly based on the diversity of these few species, yet a substantial area of the Atacama Desert hyperarid topsoil is covered by expansive boulder accumulations, whose underlying microbiomes have not been investigated so far. With the hypothesis that these sheltered soils harbor uniquely adapted microbiomes, we compared metagenomes and geochemistry between soils below and beside boulders across three distantly located boulder accumulations in the Atacama Desert hyperarid core.

Results

Genome-resolved metagenomics of eleven samples revealed substantially differ

SUBMITTER: Hwang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8627038 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature