The bacterial and archaeal biodiversity of Insuyu cave

Caves are one of the unique habitats to see interaction between rock and microbes. In the aspect of microbiological researches, caves are unique environments in order to not only the limitations on exposing to exterior environmental conditions but also the natural isolation for disturbants such as other living creatures. In these harsh environments, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Chlorobi/Bacteriodetes, Chloroflexi, Deltaproteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Nitrospirae, Actinobacteria and Betaproteobacteria are the most common and diverse group of bacteria because of their adaptation ability. In this study, we conducted cultivation-independent 16S rDNA surveys on the bacterial and archaeal community of Insuyu Cave, Burdur, TURKEY. The complexity of microbial communities has been presented in samples through PCR amplification of the 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) gene sequence, high resolution melting curve (HRM) and next generation sequence (NGS) based on 16S rRNA metagenomics from a variety of cave samples to identify bacterial and archaeal community profile of Insuyu Cave. A total of nine known bacterial class were found within the context of this research (Figure 3.4). The most prevalent class is alphaproteobacteria with 89,23% of the total bacteria found grouping into four order, with the most abundant ones: rhizobiales (88,85%) and sphingomonadales (0,21%). The followings, ordered by abundancy, are actinobacteria (3,94%), bacilli (2,92%), gammaproteobacteria (1,69%) and betaproteobacteria (0,74%). Also, a total of fourteen genera from ten order were identified in this study (Figure 3.5). The most dominant is methylobacterium with 88,83%, from the class of rhizobiales (88,85%). The followings are propionibacterium (3,58%), dolosigranulum (1,69%), streptococcus (1,10%) and pseudomonas (1,13%). On the other hand, no Archaeal species has been detected at the result of NGS analysis while some archaeal nucleic acid had been marked as a result of PCR analysis. The reasons of this situation has been investigated in the section of discussion.