Mineral and Bacterial Diversities of Desert Sand Grains from South-East Morocco - INSU - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers Access content directly
Journal Articles Geomicrobiology Journal Year : 2010

Mineral and Bacterial Diversities of Desert Sand Grains from South-East Morocco

Abstract

Mineralogy and microbiology of sand from Merzouga (Morocco) were simultaneously characterized, with the purpose of contributing to a better understanding of the geomicrobiology of deserts. In spite of very low measured bacterial biomass, bacterial diversity on each of the five defined mineralogical classes, was found high. An original grain by grain cultivation method enabled to obtain bacterial isolates with an unusually high recovery rate. The results of this study show that the genus Arthrobacter is well adapted to this environment with a preference for grains other than the dominant mineral quartz, and that the genera Chelatococcus and Saccharotrix are strongly attached to the grains.
Not file

Dates and versions

insu-00681761 , version 1 (22-03-2012)

Identifiers

Cite

Maxime Gommeaux, ​mohamed Barakat, Gilles Montagnac, Richard Christen, François Guyot, et al.. Mineral and Bacterial Diversities of Desert Sand Grains from South-East Morocco. Geomicrobiology Journal, 2010, 27 (1), pp.76-92. ⟨10.1080/01490450903393066⟩. ⟨insu-00681761⟩
138 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More