APPLING HIGH THROUGHPUT SEQUENCING (HTS) ON SNOW ALGAE: CURRENT STATE, KNOWLEDGE GAPS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
Abstract
Cryoflora consists of specialized microalgae which are mainly Chlorophyta, with an emphasis on Chlamydomonadaceae. Blooms cause snow discolorations in mountainous or polar habitats during spring and summer.
Exploration of the biodiversity of cryoflora has been hampered by weak morphologic details of spore stages dominating the snow surface and the fact that many taxa were not yet culturable for life cycle studies. In the last few years, HTS has been successfully performed on environmental samples, including characterisation of biocoenosis data of bacteria and fungi living in snow.
It allows an in-depth characterization of communities and reveals also low abundance taxa. However, this complement to classic sequencing raised several questions, especially taking the poor resolution of the 18S rDNA marker gene in the Chlamydomonadaceae into account.