Bacterial communities of Antarctic lichens explored by gDNA and cDNA 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing

Abstract

Recently, lichens came once more into the scientific spotlight due to their unique relations with prokary otes. Sever al temper ate re gion lichen species have been thoroughly explored in this regard yet, the information on Antarctic lichens and their associated bacterio- biomes is somewhat lacking. In this paper, we assessed the phylogenetic structure of the whole and acti v e fractions of bacterial com- munities housed by Antar ctic lic hens growing in differ ent envir onmental conditions by targeted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Bacterial communities associated with lichens pr ocur ed fr om a nitr ogen enriched site wer e v er y distinct fr om the comm unities iso- lated from lichens of a nitrogen depleted site. The former were characterized by substantial contributions of Bacteroidetes phylum members and the elusi v e Armatimonadetes. At the nutrient-poor site the lichen-associated bacteriobiome structur e w as unique for eac h lic hen species, with c hlorolic hens being occupied largely by Proteobacteria. Lichen species with a pronounced discrepancy in di v ersity between the whole and acti v e fractions of their bacterial communities had the widest ecological amplitude, hinting that the nonacti v e part of the comm unity is a r eserv oir of latent str ess coping mechanisms. This is the first investigation to make use of targeted metatranscriptomics to infer the bacterial biodi v ersity in Antarctic lichens.