Har Michya 16S rRNA Seq

Rock art sites in the form of petroglyphs are found in the Negev Desert in southern Israel. These petroglyph sites include thousands of images depicting the life and culture of people in the region over the years. As they are part of the desert environment, these petroglyphs are exposed to natural and anthropogenic weathering processes. In natural rock sites, it is known that climatic conditions influence weathering and biofilm community development. Therefore, in order to develop tools for preservation and remediation, it is imperative to ascertain possible seasonal diversity of surface-inhabiting bacterial communities. To do so, we undertook to study and characterize the microbial communities inhabiting the rock sites during winter and summer. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies using 16S rRNA gene were implemented on rock-surface slab samples to identify the microbial communities.

以色列南部内盖夫沙漠（Negev Desert）中分布着以岩刻（petroglyphs）为表现形式的岩画艺术遗址。这些岩刻遗址藏有数千幅图像，展现了该区域数千年来先民的生活与文化面貌。由于这些岩刻身处沙漠环境，长期暴露于自然与人为风化作用之中。学界已知，在天然岩石遗址中，气候条件会对风化过程及生物膜（biofilm）群落的发育产生影响。因此，为开发针对该类遗址的保护与修复技术，亟需明确栖息于岩石表面的细菌群落可能存在的季节多样性特征。为此，我们针对该岩刻遗址在冬季与夏季的微生物群落开展了研究并完成分类表征。本研究通过采集岩石表面岩块样本，采用基于16S rRNA基因的下一代测序（Next-generation sequencing, NGS）技术，对相关微生物群落进行了鉴定。