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Culturable bacteria isolated from snow cores along the 1300 km traverse from Zhongshan Station to Dome A, East Antarctica

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Abstract

The abundance and community composition of culturable bacteria in four snow cores along the 1300 km traverse from Zhongshan Station to Dome A, East Antarctica, were investigated through the combination of liquid and solid media and small subunit 16S rRNA sequences. Under aerobic cultivation conditions, the average concentrations of bacterial colonies from each snow core varied from 0.008 to 0.32 CFU mL−1. A total of 37 and 15 isolates with different morphologic characteristics were recovered from solid and liquid media PYGV, respectively. The phylogenetic analysis of 14 representatives with different ARDRA patterns from RFLP showed that all the isolates were affiliated with five phylogenetic groups: Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Actinobacteria represented the largest cluster with 43% of strains, and these strains exhibited unique phenotypic properties. The community compositions of culturable bacteria in the four snow cores were distinctly different from each other and the concentrations and community sizes of culturable bacteria along the traverse decreased with increases of latitude, altitude and distance from coast, which likely reflected the different bacterial sources and biogeographies under the different regional climate conditions in the snow cover of East Antarctica.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 40825017, 41171052 and 40576001), Nanjing University and Jiangsu Province. Thanks to the 21st and 26th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition for field support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Peiying Yan, Shugui Hou & Tuo Chen

  2. School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Shugui Hou

  3. School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xiaojun Ma

  4. School of Life Sciences, Shangqiu Normal University, Shangqiu, 476000, China

    Shuhong Zhang

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  1. Peiying Yan
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  2. Shugui Hou
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  3. Tuo Chen
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  4. Xiaojun Ma
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  5. Shuhong Zhang
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Correspondence to Shugui Hou.

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Communicated by A. Oren.

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Yan, P., Hou, S., Chen, T. et al. Culturable bacteria isolated from snow cores along the 1300 km traverse from Zhongshan Station to Dome A, East Antarctica. Extremophiles 16, 345–354 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-012-0434-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-012-0434-3

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