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209
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Introduction
My main research interests are to study aquatic microorganisms, from marine and wetlands including coastal and high altitude, and to determine microbial role in biogeochemical cycles, mainly in nitrogen recycling.
Additional affiliations
September 2013 - present
March 1999 - December 2010
Publications
Publications (209)
The Parque Nacional La Campana (PNLC) was recently recognized for its high soil surface microbial richness. Here, we explored the microbial community structure in soil profiles from contrasting facing slopes where sclerophyllous forest (SF) and xerophytic shrubland (XS) develop. Soil physicochemical conditions (dry density, pH, and organic matter C...
Thermophilic microorganisms possess several adaptations to thrive in high temperature, which is reflected as biosynthesis of proteins and thermostable molecules, isolation and culture represent a great methodological challenge, therefore High throughput sequencing enables screening of the whole bacterial genome for functional potential, providing r...
Parque Nacional La Campana (PNLC) is recognized worldwide for its flora and fauna, rather than for its microbial richness. Our goal was to characterize the structure and composition of microbial communities (bacteria, archaea and fungi) and their relationship with the plant communities typical of PNLC, such as sclerophyllous forest, xerophytic shru...
Major coastal upwelling systems are among the most productive marine ecosystems in the world. They contribute disproportionately to the cycling of carbon and nutrients in the ocean and influence marine biogeochemistry beyond their productive regions. Characterized by intense microbial respiration (both aerobic and anaerobic), major coastal upwellin...
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Coastal zones are ecosystems that are sensitive to climate change and anthropogenic pollution, resulting in a potential loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services through eutrophication and nutrient imbalances, among others. The coastal El Sauce catchment area, Central Chile, is under multiple anthropogenic pressures including wastewater treatment...
Taxonomic and functional microbial communities may respond differently to anthropogenic coastal impacts, but ecological quality monitoring assessments using environmental DNA and RNA (eDNA/eRNA) in response to pollution are poorly understood. In the present study, we investigated the utility of the co-occurrence network approach’s to comprehensivel...
Microbial community structures are shaped by geochemical factors and their interactions with the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere through the processes of chemical mobilisation and mineralisation. High-altitude wetlands and salt flats in the central Andes are characterised by pronounced physicochemical gradients and extreme climatic conditi...
Coastal wetlands are ecosystems associated with intense carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) recycling, modulated by salinity and other environmental factors that influence the microbial community involved in greenhouse gases production and consumption. In this study, we evaluated the influence of environmental factors on GHG...
The virus-to-prokaryote ratio (VPR) has been used in many ecosystems to study the relationship between viruses and their hosts. While high VPR values indicate a high rate of prokaryotes' cell lysis, low values are interpreted as a decrease in or absence of viral activity. Salar de Huasco is a high-altitude wetland characterized by a rich microbial...
The virus-to-prokaryote ratio (VPR) has been used in many ecosystems to study the relationship between viruses and their hosts. While high VPR values indicate a high rate of prokaryotes’ cell lysis, low values are interpreted as a decrease in or absence of viral activity. Salar de Huasco is a high-altitude wetland characterized by a rich microbial...
Patagonian fjords and channels in southern Chile are heterogeneous ecosystems characterized by the interaction of estuarine and marine waters influencing physical-chemical conditions and biological assemblages. Besides salinity, microbial communities from estuarine and marine origin are naturally subjected to changing organic matter quality and var...
Mejillones Bay is a coastal ecosystem situated in an oxygen-deficient upwelling area impacted by mining activities in the coastal desert region of northern Chile, where conspicuous microbial life develops in the sediments. Herein, heavy metal(loid)s (HMs) such as Cu, Pb, As, Zn, Al, Fe, Cd, Mo, Ni and V as well as benthic microbial communities were...
The Eastern South Pacific coastal zone is characterized by seasonal and interannual variability, driven by upwelling and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), respectively. These oceanographical conditions influence microbial communities and their contribution to nutrient and greenhouse gases recycling, especially in bottom waters due to oxygenation...
The landscapes of high-altitude wetland ecosystems are characterized by different kinds of aquatic sites, including ponds holding conspicuous microbial life. Here, we examined a representative pond of the wetland landscape for dynamics of greenhouse gases, and their association with other relevant biogeochemical conditions including diel shifts of...
Aquaculture releases organic matter to the water column through excretion, fecal pellets, and uneaten food, but also by the continuous release of fish epithelium mucus. The effect of the latter on natural bacterial assemblages was determined using ammonium amended experiments at Puyuhuapi fjord in Chilean Patagonia. Mucus was added to seawater comi...
The strong seasonal variability in physical-chemical conditions of the Eastern South Pacific Ocean creates an ideal setting to study spatiotemporal distribution of key marine microbial communities. We herein report a nearly 4-year-long time series of the variability in amoA gene counts of ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (betaproteobact...
Salar de Huasco is a wetland in the Andes mountains, located 3800 m above sea level at the Chilean Altiplano. Here we present a study aimed at characterizing the viral fraction and the microbial communities through metagenomic analysis. Two ponds (H0 and H3) were examined in November 2015. Water samples were processed using tangential flow filtrati...
Salar de Huasco is a high-altitude (3800 m a.s.l.) polyextreme aquatic environment located in the Chilean Altiplano. This chapter highlights over 15 years of microbial ecology research conducted in this fascinating system covering microbial diversity, microbial adaptation to extreme conditions, and the role of microbes in biogeochemical cycles, inc...
Hydrothermal systems are ideal to understand how microbial communities cope with challenging conditions. Lirima, our study site, is a polyextreme, high-altitude, hydrothermal ecosystem located in the Chilean Andean highlands. Herein, we analyze the benthic communities of three nearby springs in a gradient of temperature (42–72 °C represented by sta...
We studied the input of ammonium coming from the dissolution of food pellets commonly used in salmon farming as well as its potential for mineralization via ammonification and ammonium oxidation by natural bacterioplankton communities. Through experiments in central and southern Chile, we evaluated the potential for photo‐ and bio‐ammonification of...
Plastic is an allochthonous material to marine ecosystems but is rapidly colonized by marine microbial communities, with an as yet unclear contribution to biogeochemical cycles. In this study, we investigated the influence of an active microbial community grown on microplastic particles (the plastisphere) on CO2 and N2O recycling and its potential...
Inflammation and antioxidant capacity have been associated with colorectal and breast cancer. We computed the dietary inflammatory index (DII®), and the total dietary non-enzymatic antioxidant capacity (NEAC) and associated them with colorectal and breast cancer risk in the population-based multi case-control study in Spain (MCC-Spain). We included...
Tenacibaculum maritimum is a bacterial pathogen that causes tenacibaculosis outbreaks in major commercial marine fish worldwide. However, scarce knowledge exists regarding T. maritimum life strategies that could act as potential mechanisms for environmental persistence and transmission, such as surface-attached biofilms. This study used high-throug...
Poly-extreme terrestrial habitats are often used as analogs to extra-terrestrial environments. Understanding the adaptive strategies allowing bacteria to thrive and survive under these conditions could help in our quest for extra-terrestrial planets suitable for life and understanding how life evolved in the harsh early earth conditions. A prime ex...
An ointment is a semisolid preparation consisting of a single external phase in which liquid or solid substance(s) can be dispersed. In the case of beeswax ointments, there are several studies that confirm their antibiotic and healing power over injuries, especially in those caused by burns. Beeswax can be used also as an oil phase for the producti...
Zooplankton play a key role in the regeneration of nitrogen and phosphorus in the ocean through grazing and metabolism. This study investigates the role of the organic and inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus compounds released by copepods on biogeochemical processes and on the microbial community composition during the OUTPACE cruise (18 February–3 A...
Active Microbiome, viruses, nutrients, top down and bottom up controls, wetland in Chile.
The Salar de Huasco is an evaporitic basin located in the Chilean Altiplano, which presents extreme environmental conditions for life, i.e. high altitude (3800 m.a.s.l.), negative water balance, a wide salinity range, high daily temperature changes and the occurrence of the highest registered solar radiation on the planet (> 1200 W m⁻²). This ecosy...
Northern Chile harbors different bioclimatic zones including hyper-arid and arid ecosystems and hotspots of microbial life, such as high altitude wetlands, which may contribute differentially to greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). In this study, we explored ground level GHG distribution and th...
Salar de Huasco is a high‐altitude wetland characterized by a highly diverse microbial life adapted to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Our study aims to determine active microbial community structure changes within different aquatic sites and its relationship with environmental factors and viruses as potential drivers of diversificat...
Nitrospina bacteria are among the most important nitrite oxidizers in coastal and open‐ocean environments, but the relevance of the genus contrasts with the scarceness of information on their ecophysiology and habitat range. Thus far, Nitrospina bacteria have been the only nitrite oxidizers detected at high abundance in Chilean coastal waters. Thes...
High altitude wetland holds freshwater springs, evaporitic ponds and lagoon with variable salinity and nutrients, potentially influencing the ecology of nitrifying communities. In this study, nitrifying microorganisms in Salar de Huasco (Chile) were surveyed to determine bacterial and archaeal contribution to ammonium (AO), nitrite oxidation (NO),...
Zooplankton play a key role in the regeneration of nitrogen and phosphorus in the ocean through grazing and metabolism. This study investigates the role of the organic and inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus compounds released by copepods on biogeochemical processes and on the microbial community composition during the OUTPACE cruise (18 February–3 A...
Copepods are important suppliers of bioreactive compounds for marine bacteria through fecal pellet production, sloppy feeding, and the excretion of dissolved compounds. However, the interaction between copepods and bacteria in the marine environment is poorly understood. We determined the nitrogen and phosphorus compounds excreted by copepods fed w...
The role of zooplankton in microbial nitrogen turnover in marine environments is poorly understood. Here, we present results from two experiments designed to determine the excretion rate of ammonium and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) by dominant copepods, Acartia tonsa and Paracalanus cf indicus, fed with two natural sized-fractioned diets (20–15...
Salar de Huasco, defined as a polyextreme environment, is a high altitude saline wetland in the Chilean Altiplano (3800 m.a.s.l.), permanently exposed to the highest solar radiation doses registered in the world. We present here the first comparative proteomics study of a photoheterotrophic bacterium, Rhodobacter sp., isolated from this remote and...
In high altitude environments, extreme levels of solar radiation and important differences of ionic concentrations over narrow spatial scales may modulate microbial activity. In Salar de Huasco, a high-altitude wetland in the Andean mountains, the high diversity of microbial communities has been characterized and associated with strong environmenta...
Microbial communities inhabiting high-altitude spring ecosystems are subjected to extreme changes in solar irradiance and temperature throughout the diel cycle. Here, using 16S rRNA gene tag pyrosequencing (cDNA) we determined the composition of actively transcribing bacteria from spring waters experimentally exposed through the day (morning, noon,...
Pyrolibraries information, including coverage (Chao1), ecological indexes (OTU and Shannon H′), and Phyla changes through the incubations depicted by gray gradients as abundant (>0.5%, semi-rare 0.5–0.1%, and rare <0.1%). Treatments acronyms: FS (full sun treatment between 280–700 nm), Dark (cover by aluminum foil and black plastic bags), PAR (400–...
(A) Photographs showing the experiment site and setup and (B) the map of the study area (Salar de Huasco, Chile).
Rarefaction curves derived from classified active bacteria OTUs detected from the 16S rRNA pyrolibraries (cDNA) generated from samples collected in situ and the following experimental incubation treatment. Treatments acronyms: FS (full sun treatment between 280–700 nm), Dark (cover by aluminum foil and black plastic bags), PAR (400–700 nm, Photosyn...
Environmental conditions unsuitable for microbial growth are the rule rather than the exception in most habitats. In response to this, microorganisms have developed various strategies to withstand environmental conditions that limit active growth. Endospore-forming Firmicutes (EFF) deploy a myriad of survival strategies in order to resist adverse c...
We report the seasonal and single-diurnal variability of potentially active members of the prokaryote community in coastal surface waters off central Chile and the relationship between nitrifiers and solar radiation by combining 16S cDNA-based pyrosequencing, RT-qPCR of specific gene markers for nitrifiers (amoA, for general AOA, AOA-A, AOA-B, Nitr...