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Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert

The adaptation mechanisms of microbial communities to natural perturbations remain unexplored, particularly in extreme environments. The extremophilic communities of halite (NaCl) nodules from the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert are self-sustained and represent a unique opportunity to study fu...

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Autores principales: Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A., Wilburn, Paul, Davila, Alfonso, DiRuggiero, Jocelyne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9681764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36414646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23437-w
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author Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A.
Wilburn, Paul
Davila, Alfonso
DiRuggiero, Jocelyne
author_facet Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A.
Wilburn, Paul
Davila, Alfonso
DiRuggiero, Jocelyne
author_sort Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A.
collection PubMed
description The adaptation mechanisms of microbial communities to natural perturbations remain unexplored, particularly in extreme environments. The extremophilic communities of halite (NaCl) nodules from the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert are self-sustained and represent a unique opportunity to study functional adaptations and community dynamics with changing environmental conditions. We transplanted halite nodules to different sites in the desert and investigated how their taxonomic, cellular, and biochemical changes correlated with water availability, using environmental data modeling and metagenomic analyses. Salt-in strategists, mainly represented by haloarchaea, significantly increased in relative abundance at sites characterized by extreme dryness, multiple wet/dry cycles, and colder conditions. The functional analysis of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) revealed site-specific enrichments in archaeal MAGs encoding for the uptake of various compatible solutes and for glycerol utilization. These findings suggest that opportunistic salt-in strategists took over the halite communities at the driest sites. They most likely benefited from compounds newly released in the environment by the death of microorganisms least adapted to the new conditions. The observed changes were consistent with the need to maximize cellular bioenergetics when confronted with lower water availability and higher salinity, providing valuable information on microbial community adaptations and resilience to climate change.
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spelling pubmed-96817642022-11-24 Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A. Wilburn, Paul Davila, Alfonso DiRuggiero, Jocelyne Sci Rep Article The adaptation mechanisms of microbial communities to natural perturbations remain unexplored, particularly in extreme environments. The extremophilic communities of halite (NaCl) nodules from the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert are self-sustained and represent a unique opportunity to study functional adaptations and community dynamics with changing environmental conditions. We transplanted halite nodules to different sites in the desert and investigated how their taxonomic, cellular, and biochemical changes correlated with water availability, using environmental data modeling and metagenomic analyses. Salt-in strategists, mainly represented by haloarchaea, significantly increased in relative abundance at sites characterized by extreme dryness, multiple wet/dry cycles, and colder conditions. The functional analysis of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) revealed site-specific enrichments in archaeal MAGs encoding for the uptake of various compatible solutes and for glycerol utilization. These findings suggest that opportunistic salt-in strategists took over the halite communities at the driest sites. They most likely benefited from compounds newly released in the environment by the death of microorganisms least adapted to the new conditions. The observed changes were consistent with the need to maximize cellular bioenergetics when confronted with lower water availability and higher salinity, providing valuable information on microbial community adaptations and resilience to climate change. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9681764/ /pubmed/36414646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23437-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This 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 Article
Perez-Fernandez, Cesar A.
Wilburn, Paul
Davila, Alfonso
DiRuggiero, Jocelyne
Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title_full Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title_fullStr Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title_full_unstemmed Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title_short Adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
title_sort adaptations of endolithic communities to abrupt environmental changes in a hyper-arid desert
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9681764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36414646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23437-w
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