Analysis of the non-thermophilic Crenarchaeota phylogeny in the swamp soil of Zoige plateau wetland

Abstract Zoige wetland of Tibetan plateau is a model low temperature ecosystem in a low latitude (33°56′N, 102°52′E) and high altitude region. Its organism has a unique phylogeny. To better evaluate the resource of the non-thermophilic Crenarchaeota in such an ecosystem, both restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and clone techniques were employed to study the diversity and phylogenetics of the non-thermophilic Crenarchaeota in the wetland soil. Archaeal 16S rRNA genes were amplified with the archaea-specific primers, and a library consisting of 240 clones was established. The non-thermophilic Crenarchaeota phylogenetic tree was constructed using the ARB phylogenetic analysis software. Based on the results of the RFLP experiments, the clones of all three Zoige wetland swamp soil samples were grouped into 16 different restriction cleavage patterns, all the clone coverage indices were above 91%, showing high library coverage. The correlations analysis indicated that the biodiversity of the non-thermophilic Crenarchaeota be positively correlated with soil moisture. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that all of the 16 Crenarchaeota sequences were clustered into two groups: 13 sequences in the Group 1.1b and 3 in the Group 1.3, similar to those archaeal sequences obtained from grassland soil, freshwater reservoirs, and seawater above boreholes, and radioactive groundwater and hot springs.