TY - JOUR T1 - Response of extremophile microbiome to a rare rainfall reveals a two-step adaptation mechanism JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/442525 SP - 442525 AU - Gherman Uritskiy AU - Samantha Getsin AU - Adam Munn AU - Benito Gómez-Silva AU - Alfonso Davila AU - Brian Glass AU - James Taylor AU - Jocelyne DiRuggiero Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/13/442525.abstract N2 - Microbiomes play a predominant role in the biosphere and, as such, understanding the mechanisms underlying their resistance and resilience is essential to predict the impact of climate change on Earth’s ecosystems. The response of a highly specialized extremophile community from the Atacama Desert to a catastrophic rainfall provided the perfect opportunity to characterize microbial resilience to extreme perturbations. Our multi-year study revealed the contrasting dynamics of the initial response and recovery of this unique community after the rain, which resulted in a transient proteome adjustment and permanent taxonomic rearrangement. The recovered microbiome was comprised of an entirely new set of organisms, despite returning to the pre-rain functional potential. The response dynamics of this community allowed for the inference of a general model, outlining two differing modes of microbiome adaptation. ER -