ArticleMicrobiome2013
Colonization patterns of soil microbial communities in the Atacama Desert.
Article in Microbiome, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 101 papers.
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Who cites it
101 citing papers in PubMed.
- Microbial phosphorus cycling in terrestrial ecosystems.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- An Exploratory LC-HRMS Metabolomics Study of Culture Medium-Dependent Metabolic Variation and Bioactivity in Ten Fungal Strains.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- The root system of Pappostipa frigida as a hotspot of active bacterial communities in the Andean steppe of the Atacama desert.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Antarctic soil microbiomes as a reservoir for cosmetic bioactives: continental-scale diversity and predicted functions.Genes & genomics · 2026Article
- Metabolic transitions along a moisture gradient in a poly-extreme high-altitude desert ecosystem within the Atacama Desert.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Core microbiomes as a potential fingerprinting method of Western USA dust sources.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Recovery of 1,773 microbial genomes and 2,060 viral genomes from the Mars-analog Qaidam Basin desert.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Characterization of bacterial diversity associated with a Salar de Atacama native plant Nitrophila atacamensis.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Recombinant Expression and Characterization of a Novel Type I Baeyer-Villiger Monooxygenase from aInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Where the microbes aren't.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Microbial ecology of subsurface granitic bedrock: a humid-arid site comparison in Chile.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Inside the Atacama Desert: uncovering the living microbiome of an extreme environment.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Functional redundancy buffers the effect of poly-extreme environmental conditions on southern African dryland soil microbial communities.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Article
- Article
- Hyperexpansion of genetic diversity and metabolic capacity of extremophilic bacteria and archaea in ancient Andean lake sediments.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Atacama desert actinomycetes: taxonomic analysis, drought tolerance and plant growth promoting potential.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2024Article
- Grow now, pay later: When should a bacterium go into debt?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Persistent microbial communities in hyperarid subsurface habitats of the Atacama Desert: Insights from intracellular DNA analysis.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Illegal dumping of oil and gas wastewater alters arid soil microbial communities.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Temporal dynamics of microbial transcription in wetted hyperarid desert soils.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Article
41 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe Atacama Desert is one of the driest deserts in the world and its soil, with extremely low moisture, organic carbon content, and oxidizing conditions, is considered to be at the dry limit for life.
resultsAnalyses of high throughput DNA sequence data revealed that bacterial communities from six geographic locations in the hyper-arid core and along a North-South moisture gradient were structurally and phylogenetically distinct (ANOVA test for observed operating taxonomic units at 97% similarity (OTU0.03), P <0.001) and that communities from locations in the hyper-arid zone displayed the lowest levels of diversity. We found bacterial taxa similar to those found in other arid soil communities with an abundance of Rubrobacterales, Actinomycetales, Acidimicrobiales, and a number of families from the Thermoleophilia. The extremely low abundance of Firmicutes indicated that most bacteria in the soil were in the form of vegetative cells. Integrating molecular data with climate and soil geochemistry, we found that air relative humidity (RH) and soil conductivity significantly correlated with microbial communities' diversity metrics (least squares linear regression for observed OTU0.03 and air RH and soil conductivity, P <0.001; UniFrac PCoA Spearman's correlation for air RH and soil conductivity, P <0.0001), indicating that water availability and salt content are key factors in shaping the Atacama soil microbiome. Mineralization studies showed communities actively metabolizing in all soil samples, with increased rates in soils from the southern locations.
conclusionsOur results suggest that microorganisms in the driest soils of the Atacama Desert are in a state of stasis for most of the time, but can potentially metabolize if presented with liquid water for a sufficient duration. Over geological time, rare rain events and physicochemical factors potentially played a major role in selecting micro-organisms that are most adapted to extreme desiccating conditions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.