Cultivation of Diverse Microorganisms from Hypersaline Lake and Impact of Delay in Sample Processing on Cell...

The Sambhar Salt Lake is a halite rich athalassohaline basin, provides a unique opportunity for microbial ecologists to study halophiles. The lake has a high proportion of Na⁺ and Cl^- ions making it a hypersaline ecosystem. In the current study, archaea and bacteria from Sambhar Lake were isolated using two cultivation approaches. A total of 449 isolates were obtained, out of which 13 represent archaeal while 12 represent bacterial genera. Natronococcus and Alkalibacillus were found predominant groups among archaea and bacteria, respectively. Apart from the common genera in both the approaches Alteribacillus, Halobacillus, Halorubrum, Lentibacillus, Natronorubrum, Piscibacillus and Thalassobacillus were found only in the samples processed onsite however only three genera Aliidiomarina, Natrinema and Natronolimnobius were isolated when samples were processed in the laboratory after transportation using the same growth conditions. Other than the isolation of diverse group of organisms 13 putative novel taxa with similarity less than 98% were identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.