Sporobiota vs total community in Lake Geneva

Bacterial resting states such as endospores and other spore-like structures are highly resistant structures that can be preserved in sediment for extended time. These structures might be used in paleoecology, for the reconstruction of past ecosystem history. This project aims to evaluate the efficiency of a new method developed for the isolation of spore-like structures from environmental samples. Sediment samples from Lake Geneva were subjected to standard DNA extraction for the analysis of the total bacterial community, and to a specific DNA extraction protocol developed for the isolation of spore-like structures. The composition of the sporobiota and the total bacterial community were compared based on the sequencing of 16SrRNA gene amplicons.