Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.3390/microorganisms7090341
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) DNA- and RNA- derived fungal communities in subsurface aquifers only partly overlap but react similarly to environmental factors
Autor Nawaz, A.; Purahong, W.; Herrmann, M.; Küsel, K.; Buscot, F.; Wubet, T. ORCID logo
Quelle Microorganisms
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
Department BZF; BOOEK; iDiv
Band/Volume 7
Heft 9
Seite von art. 341
Sprache englisch
Supplements https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/7/9/341/s1
Keywords total fungi; active fungi; aquatic fungi; aquifers; ITS; illumina sequencing; subsurface biosphere
Abstract

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies have revolutionized our understanding of microbial diversity and composition in relation to their environment. HTS-based characterization of metabolically active (RNA-derived) and total (DNA-derived) fungal communities in different terrestrial habitats has revealed profound differences in both richness and community compositions. However, such DNA- and RNA-based HTS comparisons are widely missing for fungal communities of groundwater aquifers in the terrestrial biogeosphere. Therefore, in this study, we extracted DNA and RNA from groundwater samples of two pristine aquifers in the Hainich CZE and employed paired-end Illumina sequencing of the fungal nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region to comprehensively test difference/similarities in the “total” and “active” fungal communities. We found no significant differences in the species richness between the DNA- and RNA-derived fungal communities, but the relative abundances of various fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) appeared to differ. We also found the same set of environmental parameters to shape the “total” and “active” fungal communities in the targeted aquifers. Furthermore, our comparison also underlined that about 30%–40% of the fungal OTUs were only detected in RNA-derived communities. This implies that the active fungal communities analyzed by HTS methods in the subsurface aquifers are actually not a subset of supposedly total fungal communities. In general, our study highlights the importance of differentiating the potential (DNA-derived) and expressed (RNA-derived) members of the fungal communities in aquatic ecosystems.

dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=22185
Nawaz, A., Purahong, W., Herrmann, M., Küsel, K., Buscot, F., Wubet, T. (2019):
DNA- and RNA- derived fungal communities in subsurface aquifers only partly overlap but react similarly to environmental factors
Microorganisms 7 (9), art. 341 10.3390/microorganisms7090341