Microbial communities in sediments of Australian ephemeral salt lakes. Sediment metagenome

This study focuses on the microbial communities (and other biosignatures) that are present in four different ephemeral salt lakes in the Yilgarn Craton (Australia). Both Archaea and Bacteria were analyzed using universal primers. The region has been described as a Mars analogue environment and the results obtained during this study contribute to future missions that aim to look for traces of life on Mars. Samples were collected for surface and subsurface samples from the unflooded parts of the lake sites and 16S amplicon sequencing was performed using the Illumina miseq platform.

本研究聚焦于澳大利亚伊尔戈恩克拉通（Yilgarn Craton）内4处不同暂时性盐湖中的微生物群落与其他生物标志物（biosignatures）。研究采用通用引物对古菌（Archaea）与细菌（Bacteria）开展分析。该区域被视作火星类比环境（Mars analogue environment），本研究获取的结果可为未来旨在探测火星生命痕迹的航天任务提供重要参考。研究人员从各盐湖点位的未淹没区域采集了表层与地下样本，并借助Illumina MiSeq平台完成16S扩增子测序（16S amplicon sequencing）。