The Study Of Diversity Of Microorganism In MingYong Glacier

Glacier is a special ecosystem. Because of low temperature and scant nutrition, it has been considered as an important area for conservation of organisms and biological molecules (DNA, RNA and proteins). It provides us a "live fossil" in study of coevolution of life and environment. The glaciers are huge natural storage of microorganism. The study on microbial ecology of glacier and permafrost has very important value on the simulation of paleoclimate, collection of the information of coevolution between lives and cold-environment, study of biological evolution clock and exploration of valuable metabolic end-products. In this paper, the diversity of microorganism in Mingyong Glacier, which was located in Yunnan province and famous for its low altitude and low latitude in the world was studied.Total of twenty-nine cold-adapted microorganisms were isolated from Mingyong glacier area. Among them, twenty-two strains belong to bacteria and seven strains belong to fungi. All fungi can grow at 4～25℃. According to their morphological and physiological characteristics, fungi were identified as one member of Cladosporium genus, one member of Aspergillus genus, one member of Periconiella genus, two members of Penicillium genus and two members of Mycelia Sterilia genus, respectively.Based on morphological, physiological characteristics and 16S rRNA gene analysis, all isolated bacteria were identified. According to the growth range of isolates, only MY14011 can be defined as psychrophile, all others belong to psychrophic. Most isolates showed rod-shaped cell and stained as Gram negative. The biochemical characteristics of isolates, such as sensitivety towards antibiotics and hydrolysis ability for casein, starch and olive oil were studied and showed difference each other. According to physiological and biochemical characteristics and phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene, one isolate was identified as Chromobacterium genus, one was Flavobacterium genus, two were Arthrobacter genus and all others were Pseudomonas genus.We isolated many valuable cold-adapted microorganisms from Mingyong Glacier. This is the first report of microbial diversity in Mingyong Glacier area, Yunnan province, China. Further study will focus on developing more methods in studying microbial diverity in this area.