Isolation of Cultivable Anaerobic Bacteria from Alaska Peatlands

Abstract

Total 58 strains of anaerobic bacteria were isolated from soil samples collected from peatlands in Fairbanks, Alaska. The soil samples were cultured anaerobically in EM1 medium at 15°C for one month. The supernatant was inoculated on TSA agar media, and colonies were purified by four times sub-culturing on the same media at 15°C for one week. Phylogenetic analysis of the 58 strains was performed using 16S rRNA gene sequences and EZtax-on (Chun et al. 2007), and they were identified as 23 species (Table 1).

The 23 species belonged to only two groups: Firmicutes and Gammaproteobacteria. Among them, five species were Enterococcus species and one species was Klebsiella. They might be originated from animals lived around the sampling site. One isolate, KOPRI 90141 showed high similarity with Exiguobacterium sibiricum 25515 isolated from the Siberian permafrost (Rodrigues et al. 2006).