Comparative Analysis of Bacterial Community Composition in Lakes of the Dry Valleys, East Antarctica

Abstract

In the current study, the community composition of bacteria were investigated the perennial ice-covered lakes in the fine scale using 454-pyrosequencing; Fryxell (FRX), Hoare (HOR) and Miers (MIE). Based on 16S rRNA gene, total 124,803 sequences were quality filtered using 97% similarity cutoff, and 55 phyla were recovered containing the major phyla Actinobacteria (29%), Bacteroidetes (24.4%) and Proteobacteria (14%). In the phylum level, the bacterial taxonomy were highly shown the heterogeneous communities. Overall, microbial community composition varies not only between lakes, but also along the depth gradients within lake. Taken together, the diversity of microbial communities in lakes of MDVs provided a crucial evidence to understand the impact of microbial ecological roles in these ecosystems.