Diversity of Cultivable Bacteria of Frozen Soil in Lake Issyk-Kul Basin, Kyrgyzstan

Microbial ecology studied on frozen soils in Lake Issyk-Kul basin, Kyrgyzstan, has not yet been reported. With the aim of identifying the pure culture of bacteria in this less known earth, five culture media, PYGV, R2A, 1/4TSB, TSB, and 1/4NA, were employed to isolate the soil bacteria from four samples in this region. The-numbers of the cultivable bacterial community were 1.17 x 10(4) similar to 1.38 x 10(5) CFU/g, which decreased with the reduction of the environmental biomass. According to colonial morphology, 173 bacterial strains were isolated. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, the bacterial strains were belonged to 4 phyla, including Actinobacteria (52.60%), Firmicutes (18.50%), Proteobacteria (22.54%), and Bacteroidetes (6.36%). As the dominant genera, Arthrobacter, Planococcus, and Pseudomonas were found in all the frozen soil samples. The similarities of the 16S rRNA gene sequence with the corresponding type species were lower than 97.00% for 5 strains (N-2, N-3, N-13, R-19 and P-11):. The presence of potentially new species reinforces the need for new studies in the permafrost environments of the Lake Issyk-Kul basin.