Abstract
The glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum, which originates in the Vatnajökull ice cap and flows through a large basaltic tephra desert on its way to discharge into the Arctic Ocean, presents a number of unique microbial habitats heretofore unexplored. We sampled river water, sediment and selected other biotopes at 12 sampling points along the river from source to mouth and generated a collection of 382 purified and confirmed reculturable psychrotrophic bacterial strains. Partial 16S rDNA sequencing yielded 19 genera and 4 non-genus specific assignments in 4 bacterial phyla, with pseudomonads and flavobacteria being particularly well represented. A large portion of the isolates produced extracellular enzymes at 15. °C, including amylase, betaglucanase, cellulase, protease and laccase.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 86-95 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Cold Regions Science and Technology |
| Volume | 96 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by grants from the University of Akureyri Research Fund and the Landsvirkjun Energy Research Fund . The authors also wish to thank Helga Árnadóttir and the rangers of Vatnajökull National Park ( www.vjp.is ) for their valuable input and discussions pertaining to the selection of and access to sampling sites. We also thank Guðrún Sigríður Jónsdóttir of Iceland GeoSurvey ( www.isor.is ) for drawing the map in Fig. 1 .
Other keywords
- Cold-active enzymes
- Culturable diversity
- Flavobacterium spp.
- Glacial water microbiota
- Laccase
- Pseudomonas spp.