Article In: cienciavitae

Yellow coloured mats from lava tubes of La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) are dominated by metabolically active Actinobacteria

Scientific Reports

Manuel Francisco Costa Pereira — 2018 — Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Key information

Authors:

Manuel Francisco Costa Pereira (Manuel Francisco Costa Pereira)

Published in

01/31/2018

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Microbial diversity in lava tubes from Canary Islands (Spain) has never been explored thus far offering a unique opportunity to study subsurface microbiology. Abundant yellow coloured mats developing on coralloid speleothems in a lava tube from La Palma Islands were studied by next-generation sequencing and DNA/RNA clone library analyses for investigating both total and metabolically active bacteria. In addition, morphological and mineralogical characterization was performed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), micro-computed tomography, X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy to contextualize sequence data. This approach showed that the coralloid speleothems consist of banded siliceous stalactites composed of opal-A and hydrated halloysite. Analytical pyrolysis was also conducted to infer the possible origin of cave wall pigmentation, revealing that lignin degradation compounds can contribute to speleothem colour. Our RNA-based study showed for the first time that members of the phylum <jats:italic>Actinobacteria</jats:italic>, with 55% of the clones belonging to <jats:italic>Euzebyales</jats:italic> order, were metabolically active components of yellow mats. In contrast, the DNA clone library revealed that around 45% of clones were affiliated to <jats:italic>Proteobacteria</jats:italic>. Composition of microbial phyla obtained by NGS reinforced the DNA clone library data at the phylum level, in which <jats:italic>Proteobacteria</jats:italic> was the most abundant phylum followed by <jats:italic>Actinobacteria</jats:italic>.</jats:p>

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Publication version

VoR - Version of Record

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Title of the publication container

Scientific Reports

First page or article number

1944

Volume

8

Issue

1

ISSN

2045-2322

DOI

10.1038/S41598-018-20393-2

Fields of Science and Technology (FOS)

earth-and-related-environmental-sciences - Earth and related environmental sciences

Keywords

  • Multidisciplinary

Publication language (ISO code)

eng - English

Alternative identifier (URI)

https://publons.com/publon/1171068/

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