Abstract
In addition to the industrial and biomedical applications of lithium, information on the tolerance of microorganisms to high Li concentrations in natural biological systems is limited. Strain LCHXa is a novel free-living Gram-positive, non-motile bacterium strain isolated from water samples taken at Laguna Chaxa, a non-industrial water body with the highest soluble Li content (33 mM LiCl) within the Salar de Atacama basin in northern Chile. Enrichment was conducted in Luria-Bertani (LB) medium supplemented with 1 M LiCl. Strain LCHXa was a Novobiocin-resistant and coagulase negative Staphylococcus. Phylogenetically, strain LCHXa belongs to the species Staphylococcus sciuri. Strain LCHXa grew optimally in LB medium at pH 6–8 and 37 °C, and it was able to sustain growth at molar Li concentrations at 2 M LiCl, with a decrease in the specific growth rate of 85%. Osmoregulation in strain LCHXa partially involves glycine betaine and glycerol as compatible solutes.
Highlights
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is a coastal hyperarid territory and probably the oldest dryland on our planet [1]
We report the characterization of LCHXa, a free-living Staphylococcus sciuri strain LCHXa [14] isolated from Laguna Chaxa, a natural saline water body with the highest soluble Li content (33 mM LiCl) within the Salar de Atacama basin, which was able to sustain growth at molar Li concentrations; we provide an insight on key intracellular compatible solutes involved in osmoregulation
The draft genome sequence of Staphylococcus sciuri strain LCHXa has been recently reported to contain 58 protein-coding genes related to stress response and 17 protein-coding genes linked to osmoregulation [14]. We identified these 17 genes involved in response to osmotic stress, and 16 of them were associated to the capture, transport, or biosynthesis of glycine betaine (GB) (Table 5)
Summary
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is a coastal hyperarid territory and probably the oldest dryland on our planet [1]. Salar de Atacama is a non-fossil evaporitic basin of 14,800 km, located at the eastern border of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, between the Domeyko and Andes Mountain ranges, at 2300 m above sea level. This basin contains a lithium-rich core of 900 m deep and 1100 km2 [5] and represents one of the largest lithium reserves in our planet; together with Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) and Salar Hombre Muerto (Argentina), they constitute the so-called “Triangle of Lithium” [6]. Considering that the natural molar concentration of LiCl represents an environmental chemical stress to microorganisms, several questions can be addressed, and this study was focused on the following two: which are the microorganisms living at natural waters with high Li concentration at Salar de Atacama? And what is the microbial osmoregulatory strategy against high Li concentrations?
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