Temperature- and Nutrients-Induced Phenotypic Changes of Antarctic Green Snow Bacteria Probed by High-Throughput FTIR Spectroscopy

Temperature fluctuations and nutrient composition are the main parameters influencing green snow microbiome. In this study we investigated the influence of temperature and nutrient conditions on the growth and cellular chemical profile of bacteria isolated from green snow. Chemical profiling of the green snow bacteria was done by high-throughput FTIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate data analysis. We showed that temperature and nutrients fluctuations strongly affect growth ability and chemical profile of the green snow bacteria. The size of colonies for green snow bacteria grown at higher (25 °C) and lower (4 °C and 10 °C) than optimal temperature (18 °C) was smaller. All isolates grew on rich medium, and only 19 isolates were able to grow on synthetic minimal media. Lipid and mixed spectral regions showed to be phylogeny related. FTIR fingerprinting indicates that lipids are often affected by the temperature fluctuations. Growth on different media resulted in the change of the whole chemical profile, where lipids showed to be more affected than proteins and polysaccharides. Correlation analysis showed that nutrient composition is clearly strongly influencing chemical changes in the cells, followed by temperature.