Study of microbial mat diversity in lakes from James Ross and Vega island, Antarctica by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.

Antarctica is one of the most pristine environment in the world with a little human influence, where the anthropic activities are limited to military and scientific purposes. James Ross archipelago is an island group located in the NE of Antarctic Peninsula and high number of freshwater systems could be found in the archipelago's free-ice areas. Despite of the rough environmental conditions, these systems allow a complex microbial mats development. The community composition of these ecosystems is diverse and it is result of predominant species and the environment surrounding the mats. Given the biological importance of these communities detailed studies of the mats diversity are needed. For that reason, in this work we have proposed to study using high-throughput sequencing technologies (Ilumina amplicon sequencing), the microbial mats diversity in three lakes differing in geochemical parameters of James Ross and Vega Island. The experimental approach included 16S rRNA V3-V4 region sequencing and QIIME2 analysis of reads.

南极洲是全球受人类影响最为微弱的原始洁净环境之一，境内人类活动仅被限定于军事与科研用途。詹姆斯·罗斯群岛（James Ross Archipelago）是坐落于南极半岛东北部的岛群，其无冰区域内分布有大量淡水生态系统。尽管环境条件严苛，这些淡水系统仍可孕育出结构复杂的微生物垫（microbial mats）群落。此类生态系统的群落组成丰富多样，其结构由优势物种与微生物垫所处的周边环境共同决定。鉴于此类群落具有重要的生物学研究价值，亟需对微生物垫的多样性开展深入系统的研究。为此，本研究采用高通量测序技术（Illumina amplicon sequencing，即Illumina扩增子测序），对詹姆斯·罗斯群岛与维加岛（Vega Island）三座地球化学参数存在差异的湖泊中的微生物垫多样性展开研究。本实验的研究方案涵盖16S rRNA V3-V4可变区测序以及对测序读段（reads）的QIIME2生物信息学分析。