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First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves
While microbial communities in limestone caves across the world are relatively understood, knowledge of the microbial composition in lava tubes is lagging behind. These caves are found in volcanic regions worldwide and are typically lined with multicolored microbial mats on their walls and ceilings....
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10497698/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36750476 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-023-02181-2 |
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author | Nicolosi, Giuseppe Gonzalez-Pimentel, José L. Piano, Elena Isaia, Marco Miller, Ana Z. |
author_facet | Nicolosi, Giuseppe Gonzalez-Pimentel, José L. Piano, Elena Isaia, Marco Miller, Ana Z. |
author_sort | Nicolosi, Giuseppe |
collection | PubMed |
description | While microbial communities in limestone caves across the world are relatively understood, knowledge of the microbial composition in lava tubes is lagging behind. These caves are found in volcanic regions worldwide and are typically lined with multicolored microbial mats on their walls and ceilings. The Mount Etna (Sicily, S-Italy) represents one of the most active volcanos in the world. Due to its outstanding biodiversity and geological features, it was declared Natural Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2013. Despite the presence of more than 200 basaltic lava tubes, the microbial diversity of these hypogean systems has never been investigated so far. Here, we investigated bacterial communities in four lava tubes of Mount Etna volcano. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was carried out for the morphological characterization and detection of microbial features. We documented an abundant presence of microbial cells with different morphotypes including rod-shaped, filamentous, and coccoidal cells with surface appendages, resembling actinobacteria reported in other lava tubes across the world. Based on 16S rRNA gene analysis, the colored microbial mats collected were mostly composed of bacteria belonging to the phyla Actinomycetota, Pseudomonadota, Acidobacteriota, Chloroflexota, and Cyanobacteria. At the genus level, the analysis revealed a dominance of the genus Crossiella, which is actively involved in biomineralization processes, followed by Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Chujaibacter, and Sphingomonas. The presence of these taxa is associated with the carbon, nitrogen, and ammonia cycles, and some are possibly related to the anthropic disturbance of these caves. This study provides the first insight into the microbial diversity of the Etna volcano lava tubes, and expands on previous research on microbiology of volcanic caves across the world. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00248-023-02181-2. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10497698 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104976982023-09-14 First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves Nicolosi, Giuseppe Gonzalez-Pimentel, José L. Piano, Elena Isaia, Marco Miller, Ana Z. Microb Ecol Environmental Microbiology While microbial communities in limestone caves across the world are relatively understood, knowledge of the microbial composition in lava tubes is lagging behind. These caves are found in volcanic regions worldwide and are typically lined with multicolored microbial mats on their walls and ceilings. The Mount Etna (Sicily, S-Italy) represents one of the most active volcanos in the world. Due to its outstanding biodiversity and geological features, it was declared Natural Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2013. Despite the presence of more than 200 basaltic lava tubes, the microbial diversity of these hypogean systems has never been investigated so far. Here, we investigated bacterial communities in four lava tubes of Mount Etna volcano. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was carried out for the morphological characterization and detection of microbial features. We documented an abundant presence of microbial cells with different morphotypes including rod-shaped, filamentous, and coccoidal cells with surface appendages, resembling actinobacteria reported in other lava tubes across the world. Based on 16S rRNA gene analysis, the colored microbial mats collected were mostly composed of bacteria belonging to the phyla Actinomycetota, Pseudomonadota, Acidobacteriota, Chloroflexota, and Cyanobacteria. At the genus level, the analysis revealed a dominance of the genus Crossiella, which is actively involved in biomineralization processes, followed by Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Chujaibacter, and Sphingomonas. The presence of these taxa is associated with the carbon, nitrogen, and ammonia cycles, and some are possibly related to the anthropic disturbance of these caves. This study provides the first insight into the microbial diversity of the Etna volcano lava tubes, and expands on previous research on microbiology of volcanic caves across the world. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00248-023-02181-2. Springer US 2023-02-08 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10497698/ /pubmed/36750476 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-023-02181-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Environmental Microbiology Nicolosi, Giuseppe Gonzalez-Pimentel, José L. Piano, Elena Isaia, Marco Miller, Ana Z. First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title | First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title_full | First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title_fullStr | First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title_full_unstemmed | First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title_short | First Insights into the Bacterial Diversity of Mount Etna Volcanic Caves |
title_sort | first insights into the bacterial diversity of mount etna volcanic caves |
topic | Environmental Microbiology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10497698/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36750476 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-023-02181-2 |
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