The aquifer adjacent to Colorado River, Rifle, CO, is now arguably the most extensively microbially characterized ecosystem in the world
Scientific Achievement
We report the 4.55-Mbp genome of “Candidatus Fluviicola riflensis”, a facultative anaerobe that likely can grow over a range of O2 levels, favoring its proliferation in an aquifer adjacent to the CO River.
Significance and Impact
This brief genome announcement was unprecedented because it established that a large genome from a complex, heterogenous population could be recovered from a metagenome, enabling metabolic predictions
Research Details
- Groundwater was collected during an episode in which dissolved O2 concentrations were seasonally elevated for a short duration
- Short read sequence datasets were generated
- The genome of an environmentally important but otherwise enigmatic microbial community member was reconstructed
Citation
Banfield, J.F., Anantharaman, K., Williams, K.H., and Thomas, B.C. (2017), Complete 4.55-megabase-pair genome of “Candidatus Fluviicola riflensis,” curated from short-read metagenomic sequences, Genome Announcements, 5(47), e01299-17, doi: 10.1128/genomeA.01299-17
