Continental Antarctic is perceived as a largely pristine environment, although certain localized regions (e.g., parts of the Ross Dependency Dry Valleys) are relatively heavy impacted by human activities. The procedures ...

The microbial diversity in maritime meltwater pond sediments from Bratina Island, Ross Sea, Antarctica was investigated by 16S rDNA-dependent molecular phylogeny. Investigations of the vertical distribution, phylogenetic ...

Our results allow us to conclude that there appears to be significant conservation between the tuf genes of Planococcus, Planomicrobium and Staphylococcus spp., and that although the primer set TstaG422/TStag765 has ...

The discovery of extensive and complex hypolithic communities in both cold and hot deserts has raised many questions regarding their ecology, biodiversity and relevance in terms of regional productivity. However, most ...

We have applied bioluminescent ATP detection methods to microbial enumeration in Antarctic Dry Valley mineral soils, and validated our ATP data by two independent methods. We have demonstrated that ATP measurement is ...

PCR-based technologies are widely employed for the detection of specific microorganisms, and may be applied to the identification of non-indigenous microorganisms in ‘pristine’ environments. For ‘pristine’ environments ...