ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2017
Microbial Diversity in a Hypersaline Sulfate Lake: A Terrestrial Analog of Ancient Mars.
Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gypsum Gardens: Self-Assembled Tubular Structures of Calcium Sulfate with Relevance for the Detection of Extraterrestrial Life.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- The effects of brines relevant to Mars and the ocean worlds on bacterial growth reflect salt-specific responses across water activity.Archives of microbiology · 2025Article
- Microbes from ambient-pressure analogues offer insights into possible life in Europa's high-pressure subsurface ocean.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Hydrochemical gradients driving extremophile distribution in saline and brine groundwater of southern Poland.Environmental microbiology reports · 2024Article
- Biosignature Molecules Accumulate and Persist in Evaporitic Brines: Implications for Planetary Exploration.Astrobiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Red Sea Atlas of Coral-Associated Bacteria Highlights Common Microbiome Members and Their Distribution across Environmental Gradients-A Systematic Review.Microorganisms · 2022Review
- Complete Genome Sequence ofMicrobiology resource announcements · 2022Article
- Microbial Communities in Saltpan Sediments Show Tolerance to Mars Analog Conditions, but Susceptibility to Chloride and Perchlorate Toxicity.Astrobiology · 2022Article
- Investigation of fungal biomolecules after Low Earth Orbit exposure: a testbed for the next Moon missions.Environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Microbes from Brine Systems with Fluctuating Salinity Can Thrive under Simulated Martian Chemical Conditions.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Complex Brines and Their Implications for Habitability.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Holocene life and microbiome profiling in ancient tropical Lake Chalco, Mexico.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- MetFish: a Metabolomics Pipeline for Studying Microbial Communities in Chemically Extreme Environments.mSystems · 2021Article
- Bacterial Communities Associated with the Biofilms Formed in High-Altitude Brackish Water Pangong Tso Located in the Himalayan Plateau.Current microbiology · 2020Article
- A New Record for Microbial Perchlorate Tolerance: Fungal Growth in NaClOLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Growth, Cell Division, and Gene Expression ofMicroorganisms · 2020Article
- Whole-Genome Shotgun Sequence ofMicrobiology resource announcements · 2020Article
- A Systematic Study of the Limits of Life in Mixed Ion Solutions: Physicochemical Parameters Do Not Predict Habitability.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Bacterial Growth in Saturated and Eutectic Solutions of Magnesium Sulphate and Potassium Chlorate with Relevance to Mars and the Ocean Worlds.International journal of astrobiology · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Life can persist under severe osmotic stress and low water activity in hypersaline environments. On Mars, evidence for the past presence of saline bodies of water is prevalent and resulted in the widespread deposition of sulfate and chloride salts. Here we investigate Spotted Lake (British Columbia, Canada), a hypersaline lake with extreme (>3 M) levels of sulfate salts as an exemplar of the conditions thought to be associated with ancient Mars. We provide the first characterization of microbial structure in Spotted Lake sediments through metagenomic sequencing, and report a bacteria-dominated community with abundant Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes, as well as diverse extremophiles. Microbial abundance and functional comparisons reveal similarities to Ace Lake, a meromictic Antarctic lake with anoxic and sulfidic bottom waters. Our analysis suggests that hypersaline-associated species occupy niches characterized foremost by differential abundance of Archaea, uncharacterized Bacteria, and Cyanobacteria. Potential biosignatures in this environment are discussed, specifically the likelihood of a strong sulfur isotopic fractionation record within the sediments due to the presence of sulfate reducing bacteria. With its high sulfate levels and seasonal freeze-thaw cycles, Spotted Lake is an analog for ancient paleolakes on Mars in which sulfate salt deposits may have offered periodically habitable environments, and could have concentrated and preserved organic materials or their biomarkers over geologic time.
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