The Diversity of Pseudomonas species from the Accumulation Zone of Kanchengayao Glacier, North Sikkim, India

Glaciers are the cryospheric niches which support concealed microbial life. They inhabit broad-spectrum culturable and non-culturable bacterial diversity. There is virtually very little information on the psychrophilic/psychrotolerant bacterial diversity found in the glaciers in India. Indian Himalayas are regarded as the world heritage of flora and fauna. As it houses many largest glaciers in its lap, a new venture into glaciers has been started. Microbiological investigation of the glaciers in North-East India will help us to have an insight into the hidden treasure of microflora. We are providing the first report on the Psuedomonas sp. diversity from Kanchengayao glacier, North Sikkim, India. It is one of the most dominant genera isolated from glacier ice samples. This genus is one of the most medically and ecologically important groups of Gamma-proteobacteria present in environment. In the present study, the diversity of Pseudomonas species isolated from ice core sample was carried out based on the phenotypic and genotypic analysis. It was found that the glacier was abundant in Pseudomonas azotoformans; Pseudomonas poae; Stenotrophomonas maltophilia; Pseudomonas fluorescens; Pseudomonas reactants; Pseudomonas hibiscicola and Pseudomonas synxantha. Interestingly, the antibiotic susceptibility test showed that all the isolates were resistant to Ampicillin (10mcg) but all were sensitive to Streptomycin (10mcg), 19 isolates were resistant to Vancomycin (30mcg) and six were resistant against Tetracycline (30mcg) whereas majority of the isolates showed intermediate response. The antibiotic resistance found in this unexplored area is an important study and first of its kind reported from this glacier.