Lut Desert

⎯Admittedly, the Lut Desert of Iran has been remained as an unexplored region from a microbio-logical standpoint. Domain Archaea contains extremophiles that can live in harsh habitats. Extremely halo-philic archaea are exposed to different environmental stresses in the hypersaline environments such as high solar irradiance and periodic desiccation. Haloarchaeal diversity in Shoor River, a saline river in the Lut Desert (a salinity of 134.3 g L-1 of dissolved salts), was investigated by a culture-dependent method. A large number of extremely halophilic isolates were obtained and a subset of 59 isolates was considered distinct. Firstly, the isolates were screened for their resistance under desiccation stress in 35 days. Eleven of these strains remained viable during the period in a desiccator containing silica gel. Then, three of them were randomly selected and their resistance against desiccation and ionizing radiation were determined. The isolates MS2, MS17, and MS50 were still recovered after 8 weeks in a desiccator and were moderately resistant to gamma radiation with D 10 value between 2 and 3 kGy. Strains MS2, MS17, and MS50 were affiliated with three species in the family Halobacteriaceae using 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis as well as morphological and biochemical characteristics-Haloterrigena jeotgali A29 T (99.6% similarity), Natrialba aegyptia 40 T (99.4% similarity) and Natrinema pallidum NCIMB 777 T (99.3% similarity), respectively. Although resistance to desiccation did not follow the sigmoid survival curve pattern of Deinococcus radiodurans, apparently haloarchaea can show a more resistance to desiccation in more long-term periods of time. This is the first report on isolation of extremely halophilic archaea belonged to the family Halobacteriaceae and their radioresistance and desiccation tolerance properties isolated from the Shoor River.