Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb 9;26(1):12.
doi: 10.1007/s00792-022-01260-5.

Anion-type modulates the effect of salt stress on saline lake bacteria

Bianka Csitári #  1   2   3 , Anna Bedics #  1   4 , Tamás Felföldi  1   5 , Emil Boros  5 , Hajnalka Nagy  1 , István Máthé  6 , Anna J Székely  7   8
Affiliations

Anion-type modulates the effect of salt stress on saline lake bacteria

Bianka Csitári et al. Extremophiles. .

Abstract

Beside sodium chloride, inland saline aquatic systems often contain other anions than chloride such as hydrogen carbonate and sulfate. Our understanding of the biological effects of salt composition diversity is limited; therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of different anions on the growth of halophilic bacteria. Accordingly, the salt composition and concentration preference of 172 strains isolated from saline and soda lakes that differed in ionic composition was tested using media containing either carbonate, chloride or sulfate as anion in concentration values ranging from 0 to 0.40 mol/L. Differences in salt-type preference among bacterial strains were observed in relationship to the salt composition of the natural habitat they were isolated from indicating specific salt-type adaptation. Sodium carbonate represented the strongest selective force, while majority of strains was well-adapted to growth even at high concentrations of sodium sulfate. Salt preference was to some extent associated with taxonomy, although variations even within the same bacterial species were also identified. Our results suggest that the extent of the effect of dissolved salts in saline lakes is not limited to their concentration but the type of anion also substantially impacts the growth and survival of individual microorganisms.

Keywords: Alkaline habitat; Athalassic; Bacterioplankton; Natronophiles; Salt stress; Soda lake.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

We declare that there is no actual or potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Salt composition of the lake water from where the strains were isolated and the media used in the salt tolerance test. Dissolved salts are shown in molar ratio. The ionic compositions of the lakes are based on data from Boros et al. (2014) and Andrei et al. (2015). Data for the ionic composition of Roşu Lake is not available, but as Roşu Lake is a tributary of Ursu Lake, the two lakes are expected to have fairly similar ionic composition
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Taxonomic affiliation of the studied bacterial strains by region of isolation. Phylum- (A), class- (B) and order-level (C) distribution
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Growth intensity of bacterial strains in liquid media containing the three tested salt types in different concentration values based on turbidity data (z-score normalized OD). Trendlines are drawn according to mean OD values
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Clustering of the growth patterns measured in the salt tolerance test. Heatmap displays the z-score normalized OD values by anion type of the media. Dendrogram on the left shows hierarchical clustering by Euclidean distance clustered, colored bars on the right indicate taxonomic affiliation and the region of isolation of each studied bacterial strain
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Weighted growth values of tested bacterial strains in different anion-type media by region of isolation. Data points colored by taxonomic affiliation of the corresponding strain. Boxplots show the first and the third quartiles with the median. Significantly different categories according to Dunn’s post-hoc test are marked by different letters
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Aguilar-Barajas E, Díaz-Pérez C, Ramírez-Díaz MI, Riveros-Rosas H, Cervantes C. Bacterial transport of sulfate, molybdate, and related oxyanions. Biometals. 2011;24:687–707. doi: 10.1007/s10534-011-9421-x. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alexe M, Serban G, Baricz A, Andrei AS, Cristea A, Battes KP, Cîmpean M, Momeu L, Muntean V, Porab SA, Banciu HL. Limnology and plankton diversity of salt lakes from Transylvanian Basin (Romania): A review. J Limnol. 2017;77:17–34. doi: 10.4081/jlimnol.2017.1657. - DOI
    1. Andrei AŞ, Robeson MS, II, Baricz A, Coman C, Muntean V, Ionescu A, Etiope G, Alexe M, Sicora IC, Podar M, Banciu HL. Contrasting taxonomic stratification of microbial communities in two hypersaline meromictic lakes. ISME J. 2015;9:26–42. doi: 10.1038/ismej.2015.60. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Banciu HL, Muntyan MS. Adaptive strategies in the double-extremophilic prokaryotes inhabiting soda lakes. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2015;25:73–79. doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2015.05.003. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Banciu H, Sorokin DY, Muyzer G, Kleerebezem R, Galinski EA, Kuenen JG. Thioalkalivibrio halophilus sp. nov, a novel obligately chemolithoautotrophic facultatively alkaliphilic and extremely salt-tolerant sulfur-oxidizing bacterium from a hypersaline alkaline lake. Extremophiles. 2004;8:325–334. doi: 10.1007/s00792-004-0391-6. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources