Extremophiles in the yungas forest

Abstract

Hot springs usually have a remarkable diversity of associated organisms, where a gradient of temperature and chemical compounds shape the microbial communities. They represent an opportunity for the search of thermostable enzymes. The Yungas provide a setting with a thriving biodiversity, presenting a unique opportunity to find unusual organisms and metabolisms. Viruses identified though metagenomics DNA sequencing have usually linear double-stranded DNA genomes. In this work, most of the 212 sequences belonged to class Caudoviricetes, bacterial and archaeal viruses with head-tail morphology. 4936 CAZymes were identified in black mat (13 in viral contigs) and 5636 in green mat (6 in viral contigs). Several of them had multiple hits to GH and GT families. One AA10 CAZyme found at black mat contig 5568 polysaccharide monooxygenase" Affiliated to uncultivated and chitinolytic organisms.