Solar salterns as model systems to study the units of bacterial diversity that matter for ecosystem functioning

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Authors

Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T.
Viver, Tomeu
Conrad, Roth E.
Venter, S.N. (Stephanus Nicolaas)
Rossello-Mora, Ramon

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Abstract

Microbial communities often harbor overwhelming species and gene diversity, making it challenging to determine the important units to study this diversity. We argue that the reduced, and thus tractable, microbial diversity of manmade salterns provides an ideal system to advance this cornerstone issue. We review recent time-series genomic and metagenomic studies of the saltern-dominating bacterial and archaeal taxa to show that these taxa form persistent, sequence-discrete, species-like populations. While these populations harbor extensive intra-population gene diversity, even within a single saltern site, only a small minority of these genes appear to be functionally important during environmental perturbations. We outline an approach to detect and track such populations and their ecologically important genes that should be broadly applicable.

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Keywords

Solar salterns, Ecosystem functioning, Bacterial diversity

Sustainable Development Goals

Citation

Konstantinidis, K.T., Viver, T., Conrad, R.E. et al. 2022, 'Solar salterns as model systems to study the units of bacterial diversity that matter for ecosystem functioning', Current Opinion in Biotechnology, vol. 73, pp. 151-157.