Diversity of extremely halophilic archaeal and bacterial communities from commercial salts

Ashagrie Gibtan, Kyounghee Park, Mingyeong Woo, Jung Kue Shin, Dong Woo Lee, Jae Hak Sohn, Minjung Song, Seong Woon Roh, Sang Jae Lee, Han Seung Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Salting is one of the oldest food preservation techniques. However, salt is also the source of living halophilic microorganisms that may affect human health. In order to determine the microbial communities of commercial salts, an investigation were done using amplicon sequencing approach in four commercial salts: Ethiopian Afdera salt (EAS), Ethiopian rock salt (ERS), Korean Jangpan salt (KJS), and Korean Topan salt (KTS). Using domain-specific primers, a region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced using a Roche 454 instrument. The results indicated that these microbial communities contained 48.22-61.4% Bacteria, 37.72-51.26% Archaea, 0.51-0.86% Eukarya, and 0.005-0.009% unclassified reads. Among bacteria, the communities in these salts were dominated by the phyla Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes. Of the archaea, 91.58% belonged to the class Halobacteria, whereas the remaining 7.58, 0.83, and 0.01% were Nanoarchaea, Methanobacteria, and Thermococci, respectively. This comparison of microbial diversity in salts from two countries showed the presence of many archaeal and bacterial genera that occurred in salt samples from one country but not the other. The bacterial genera Enterobacter and Halovibrio were found only in Korean and Ethiopian salts, respectively. This study indicated the occurrence and diversity of halophilic bacteria and archaea in commercial salts that could be important in the gastrointestinal tract after ingestion.

Original languageEnglish
Article number799
JournalFrontiers in Microbiology
Volume8
Issue numberMAY
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017 May 10

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Gibtan, Park, Woo, Shin, Lee, Sohn, Song, Roh, Lee and Lee.

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Microbiology
  • Microbiology (medical)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Diversity of extremely halophilic archaeal and bacterial communities from commercial salts'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this