Abstract
Members of the bacterial phylum Planctomycetes inhabit various aquatic and terrestrial environments. In this study, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was applied to assess the abundance and depth distribution of these bacteria in nine different acidic wetlands of Northern Russia. Planctomycetes were most abundant in the oxic part of the wetland profiles. The respective cell numbers were in the range 1.1–6.7 × 107 cells g−1 of wet peat, comprising 2–14% of total bacterial cells, and displaying linear correlation to the peat water pH. Most peatland sites showed a sharp decline of planctomycete abundance with depth, while in two particular sites this decline was followed by a second population maximum in an anoxic part of the bog profile. Oxic peat layers were dominated by representatives of the Isosphaera–Singulisphaera group, while anoxic peat was inhabited mostly by Zavarzinella- and Pirellula-like planctomycetes. Phylogenetically related bacteria of the candidate division OP3 were detected in both oxic and anoxic peat layers with cell densities of 0.6–4.6 × 106 cells g−1 of wet peat.
Highlights
The phylum Planctomycetes is a remarkable group of budding bacteria that possess highly distinctive cell morphology, peptidoglycan-less cell-walls, and a unique cell organization (Schlesner and Stackebrandt, 1986; Fuerst, 1995; Ward et al, 2006; Fuerst and Sagulenko, 2011)
Highest abundances of cells targeted with the probes PLA46 and PLA886 were observed in the uppermost, oxic layers of the PCR AMPLIFICATION, CLONING, AND SEQUENCING PCR-mediated amplification of the 16S rRNA gene fragments (∼1350 bp) of peat-inhabiting planctomycetes was performed using the combination of the Planctomycete-specific forward primer Pla46 (5 -GGA TTA GGC ATG CAA GTC-3 ) targeting positions 46–63 of Escherichia coli 16S rRNA gene (Neef et al, 1998) and the universal bacterial reverse primer Univ1390R (5 GAC GGG CGG TGT GTA CAA-3 ; Zheng et al, 1996)
The cell numbers of planctomycetes in these layers were in the range 1.1–6.7 × 107 cells g−1 of wet peat, comprising 2–14% of cells detected in peat with the Bacteria-specific probe Eub338-mix
Summary
The phylum Planctomycetes is a remarkable group of budding bacteria that possess highly distinctive cell morphology, peptidoglycan-less cell-walls, and a unique cell organization (Schlesner and Stackebrandt, 1986; Fuerst, 1995; Ward et al, 2006; Fuerst and Sagulenko, 2011). Members of this phylum are ubiquitous in a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial environments with diverse conditions. Since all currently characterized peat-inhabiting planctomycetes are chemoorganotrophs capable of growth in aerobic or microaerobic but not in anoxic conditions (Kulichevskaya et al, 2007b, 2008, 2009, 2012), the present study was initiated in order to examine depth distribution of these bacteria in different types of northern wetlands and to compare planctomycete diversity in oxic and anoxic peat layers
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