title: Remnants of marine bacterial communities can be retrieved from deep sediments in lakes of marine origin.
abstract: Some bacteria can be preserved over time in deep sediments where they persist either in dormant or slow-growing vegetative stages. Here, we hypothesized that such cells can be revived when exposed to environmental conditions similar to those before they were buried in the sediments. To test this hypothesis, we collected bacteria from sediment samples of different ages (140-8500 calibrated years before present, cal BP) from three lakes that differed in the timing of their physical isolation from the Baltic Sea following postglacial uplift. After these bacterial communities were grown in sterile water from the Baltic Sea, we determined the proportion of 16S rRNA sequence reads associated with marine habitats by extracting the environment descriptive terms of homologous sequences retrieved from public databases. We found that the proportion of reads associated with marine descriptive term was significantly higher in cultures inoculated with sediment layers formed under Baltic conditions and where salinities were expected to be similar to current levels. Moreover, a similar pattern was found in the original sediment layers. Our study, therefore, suggests that remnants of marine bacterial communities can be preserved in sediments over thousands of years and can be revived from deep sediments in lakes of marine origin.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Silke
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Langenheder
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Comte
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Yinghua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zha
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.|Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, 720 Cumberland St. North Dunedin, 9016, Dunedin, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Md Sainur
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Samad
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Lucas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sinclair
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Eiler
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Eva S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Lindström
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D058448:Biota; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004275:DNA, Ribosomal / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000382:microbiology*; D060106:Lakes / Q000382:microbiology*; D056186:Metagenomics; D010802:Phylogeny; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004275:DNA, Ribosomal; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S