Microbiology and Geochemistry of Smith Creek and Grass Valley Hot Springs: Emerging Evidence for Wide Distribution of Novel Thermophilic Lineages in the US Great Basin

摘要

INTRODUCTION The endorheic Great Basin (GB) region in the western US is host to a variety of non-acidic geothermal spring systems. Heating of the majority of these systems is due to their association with rangefront faults, in contrast to caldera-associated hot springs in systems such as Yellowstone National Park and Kamchatka (Faulds et al., 2006). Previous characterization of two geothermal systems in the GB, Great Boiling/Mud Hot springs (Costa et al., 2009) and Little Hot Creek (Vick et al., 2010), indicated that they host several novel deep lineages of potentially abundant Bacteria and Archaea. To expand the knowledge base of the microbiology and geochemistry of GB hot springs and facilitate their comparison to other terrestrial geothermal systems worldwide, we present here the characterization of Smith Creek (SCI) and Grass Valley (GVS1) hot springs in central Nevada, US.