Beyond Archaea: The Table Salt Bacteriome

Abstract

Commercial table salt is a condiment with food preservative properties by decreasing water activity and increasing osmotic pressure. Salt is also a source of halophilic bacteria and archaea. In the present research, the diversity of halotolerant and halophilic microorganisms was studied in six commercial table salts by culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques. Three table salts were obtained from marine origins: Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean (Ibiza Island), and Odiel marshes (supermarket marine salt). Other salts supplemented with mineral and nutritional ingredients were also used: Himalayan pink, Hawaiian black, and one with dried vegetables known as Viking salt. The results of 16S rRNA gene sequencing reveal that the salts from marine origins display a similar archaeal taxonomy, but with significant variations among genera. Archaeal taxa Halorubrum, Halobacterium, Hallobellus, Natronomonas, Haloplanus, Halonotius, Halomarina, and Haloarcula were prevalent in those three marine salts. Furthermore, the most abundant archaeal genera present in all salts were Natronomonas, Halolamina, Halonotius, Halapricum, Halobacterium, Haloarcula, and uncultured Halobacterales. Sulfitobacter sp. was the most frequent bacteria, represented almost in all salts. Other genera such as Bacillus, Enterococcus, and Flavobacterium were the most frequent taxa in the Viking, Himalayan pink, and black salts, respectively. Interestingly, the genus Salinibacter was detected only in marine-originated salts. A collection of 76 halotolerant and halophilic bacterial and haloarchaeal species was set by culturing on different media with a broad range of salinity and nutrient composition. Comparing the results of 16S rRNA gene metataxonomic and culturomics revealed that culturable bacteria Acinetobacter, Aquibacillus, Bacillus, Brevundimonas, Fictibacillus, Gracilibacillus, Halobacillus, Micrococcus, Oceanobacillus, Salibacterium, Salinibacter, Terribacillus, Thalassobacillus, and also Archaea Haloarcula, Halobacterium, and Halorubrum were identified at least in one sample by both methods. Our results show that salts from marine origins are dominated by Archaea, whereas salts from other sources or salt supplemented with ingredients are dominated by bacteria.

Obligately aerobic human gut microbe expresses an oxygen resistant tungsten-containing oxidoreductase for detoxifying gut aldehydes

“…A total of 14 of the 29 genera have species that have been isolated from samples taken from salt-rich environments and salterns ( Lee, 2013 ; Henriet et al, 2014 ; Gibtan et al, 2017 ; Seck et al, 2018 ). Of the 17 distinct bacterial genera, two were found in human-related samples, one in food-related samples and one in a saltern ( Kumar et al, 2015 ; Quigley et al, 2016 ; Yu et al, 2016 ; Satari et al, 2021 ). Hence, the WOR of B. massiliensis appears to be prototypical of WORs found in aerobes that are predominantly extremely halophilic Archaea, many found associated with human microbiomes, like B. massiliensis, or in foods.…”

A step into the rare biosphere: genomic features of the new genus Terrihalobacillus and the new species Aquibacillus salsiterrae from hypersaline soils

“…The prokaryotic diversity of its hypersaline soils has been previously studied by metagenomic techniques ( Vera-Gargallo and Ventosa, 2018 ; Vera-Gargallo et al, 2019 ), which detected the phylum Bacillota as a minor fraction among the 26 different retrieved phyla. To our best knowledge, there are no reference studies on the ecological distribution of Aquibacillus other than its presence in table salt, determined by metataxonomic and culturomic approaches ( Satari et al, 2021 ).…”

Microbial community structure and shift pattern of industry brine after a long-term static storage in closed tank

“…Interestingly, genus Natronomonas dominates in all samples (Figure 4F). As observed elsewhere, genus Natronomonas is one of the most successful ecological taxa able to survive in hypersaline environments (Chen et al, 2020;Banda et al, 2021;Satari et al, 2021;Zhu et al, 2021).…”