Profiling of Microbial Communities from HighAltitude Permafrost Affected Soil withNext-Generation Sequencing

摘要

Background: Permafrost covers over 25% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere and hosts a diversity ofmicrobes proposed to be unique to cold habitats. These frozen soils represent a largely understudied genetic resource. Climatechange due to global warming has a significant impact on permafrost thawing which in turn promote microbial carbon turnoverwith a positive feedback on greenhouse gases. In this study we attempted to get an insight into the microbiome of the highaltitude permafrost affected soil from the Changthang region of Ladakh through 16s rRNA amplicon sequencing.Results: Bioinformatics analysis of the sequences clearly reveals that the phylum Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria,Bacteroidetes, Verrucomicrobia, Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadetes and Nitrospirae dominated the permafrost soil microflora inthe samples with slight difference in their relative abundance. Various classes of phylum Actinobacteria such as Acidimicrobiia,Actinobacteria, and Thermoleophilia were also observed in the samples. Further, the analysis of the sequence also shows thatthe phylum Thaumachaeota and Euryarchaeota were the dominant archaeal phyla in the soil samples. Deeper analysis of thesamples clearly showed that Methanosaeta followed by Methanobacterium were the dominant genera in the soil cores which aredominant acetoclastic methanogen.Significance: Climate change due to global warming results in permafrost thawing which in turn increase microbial activity andmicrobial degradation of permafrost organic carbon. Our result suggested that the extreme terrestrial environments areexcellent niches for specialized microorganisms belonging to the domains of Bacteria and Archaea. The micro organismsthriving in this soil have the potential to degrade the organic carbon sequestered in the permafrost of this region.