Diversity and Distribution Characteristics of Culturable Bacteria in Burqin Glacier No. 18, Altay Mountains, China

Ecosystems away from human disturbance provide an ideal paradigm for microbial ecology research. The Burqin glacier No. 18 in the Chinese Altay Mountains is such an ecosystem; however, there are no prior studies on the microbiology in the area. Here, we isolated 902 bacterial strains on the Burqin g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diversity (Basel) 2023-09, Vol.15 (9), p.997
Main Authors: Tian, Mao, Jia, Puchao, Wu, Yujie, Yu, Xue, Wu, Shiyu, Yang, Ling, Zhang, Binglin, Wang, Feiteng, Liu, Guangxiu, Chen, Tuo, Zhang, Wei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria
Burqin glacier No. 18
Carbon
Colonies
culturable bacteria
Cyanobacteria
diversity
Ecological research
Ecosystems
Glaciers
Human impact
Microbiology
Microorganisms
Mountains
New species
pigmented bacteria
potential new species
Species diversity
Strains (organisms)
Variance analysis
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Summary:Ecosystems away from human disturbance provide an ideal paradigm for microbial ecology research. The Burqin glacier No. 18 in the Chinese Altay Mountains is such an ecosystem; however, there are no prior studies on the microbiology in the area. Here, we isolated 902 bacterial strains on the Burqin glacier No. 18 to determine the diversity and distribution characteristics of microorganisms. Isolated strains belonged to six phyla (in the order of dominance: Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Firmicutes, and Deinococcus-Thermus) and 90 genera. Our results also demonstrated the presence of a high proportion of potential new species (43%) in the Burqin glacier No. 18, and 67% of the potential new species were isolated at 25 °C. Species diversity varied among habitats, with the lowest diversity in surface ice and the highest diversity in the soil farthest from the glacier terminus. The pigmented colonies made up 52.7% of all isolates, with yellow-colored colonies being the most abundant (18.8%). This study indicates that the Burqin glacier No. 18 hosts rich bacterial strain diversity, and may represent a significant potential source of new functional and pigmented bacteria for the development of critical pharmaceuticals.
ISSN:1424-2818
1424-2818
DOI:10.3390/d15090997