Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Innovación y Postgrado

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Examinando Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Innovación y Postgrado por Materia "Atacama Desert"

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    Climate variability in a 3.8 Ma old sedimentary record from the hyperarid Atacama Desert
    (ELSEVIER Inc., 2024) Arens, Felix L.; Feige, Jenny; Airo, Alessandro; Sager, Christof; Hecht, Lutz; Horstmann, Lucas; Kaufmann, Felix E.D.; Lachner, Johannes; Neumann, Thomas; Nowaczyk, Norbert; Schiperski, Ferry; Steier, Peter; Stoll, Alexandra; Struck, Ulrich; Valenzuela, Bernardita; von Blanckenburg, Friedhelm; Wittmann, Hella; Wacker, Lukas; Wagner, Dirk; Zamorano, Pedro; Schulze Makuch, Dirk
    The hyperarid Atacama Desert is one of the driest and oldest deserts on Earth, rendering it a valuable climate archive. However, unraveling its past climate is particularly challenging and the few studied paleoclimate records of the region reveal strong temporal and spatial variabilities. To enhance our understanding of these dynamics we investigated a sedimentary record in the Yungay valley located in the southern hyperarid Atacama Desert. We employed paleomagnetic and radiocarbon dating, and for the first time for Atacama Desert sediments, a meteoric 10Be/9Be based method for determining the depositional age. The respective 4.20 m deep profile comprises a lower alluvial fan deposit with a maximum age of 3.8 ± 0.8 Ma, and an upper 1.84 m thick clay pan deposit that has accumulated over the last 19 ka. Different proxies including grain size, salt concentration, and elemental composition indicate an aridity increase around 2.3 Ma ago and repeated dry and wet phases during the late Pleistocene and the Holocene. The latter climatic shifts can be assigned to variabilities of the South American Summer Monsoon and El Niño Southern Oscillation with moisture sources from the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean, respectively. This study provides deeper insights into the heterogeneous climate of the hyperarid Atacama Desert and underlines the importance of interdisciplinary investigations to decipher climate systems and their effect on potential habitable regions in such an extreme environment.
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    Ítem
    Isolation of Thermophilic Bacteria from Extreme Environments in Northern Chile
    (MDPI, 2024) Valenzuela, Bernardita; Solís-Cornejo, Francisco; Araya, Rubén; Zamorano, Pedro
    The northern region of Chile boasts unique geographical features that support the emergence of geothermal effluents, salt lagoons, and coastal creeks. These extreme climate conditions create polyextreme habitats for microorganisms, particularly adapted to survive these harsh environments. These extremophilic microorganisms hold immense potential as a source of hydrolytic enzymes, among other biotechnological applications. In this study, we isolated 15 strains of aerobic thermophilic bacteria (45–70 ◦C) from sediment samples collected at five different ecological sites, including hot springs, geothermal fields, and lagoons in the Atacama Desert and Andes high planes. Analyses of the 16S rRNA gene sequences of the isolates showed a close genetic similarity (98–100%) with microorganisms of the genera Parageobacillus, Geobacillus, Anoxybacillus, and Aeribacillus. Notably, these thermophiles exhibited significant hydrolytic enzyme activity, particularly amylases, lipases, and proteases. These findings underscore the potential of using these thermophilic bacterial strains as an invaluable source of thermozymes with wide-ranging applications in diverse industries, such as detergent formulations, pharmaceutical processing, and food technology. This research highlights the ecological significance of these extreme environments in the Atacama Desert and Andes high plains, which serve as vital ecological niches housing extremophilic bacteria as a genetic source of relevant thermozymes, promising great potential for innovation in the biotechnology industry.