Revealing the diversity of bacteria in the active layer of permafrost at Spitsbergen island (Arctic) – Combining classical microbiology and metabarcoding for ecological and bioprospecting exploration

The soil sampling covered diverse Arctic ecosystems, including soils under marine influence, zoogenic soil, and glacier moraine. Samples were taken in August 2017.

Physicochemical analyses showed a relatively high ratio of carbon to nitrogen (average 10:1) in the analyzed soils, which indicates a high influence of soil microorganisms on the shaping of the investigated ecosystems. Cultivation experiments using different rich and minimal growth media were conducted and metabarcoded using Ilumina sequencing of 16S rDNA to assess the overall microbial cultivability of Arctic soils. As revealed from the combining this results with soil metabarcoding (soil metabarcoding not included in this dataset), the culture-dependent approach allowed for the recovery of 6.37 % of bacterial genera when compared with the culture-independent approach.