The soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys are exposed to extremely dry and cold conditions. Nevertheless, they contain active biological communities that contribute to the biogeochemical processes. We have used ester-linked fatty acid (ELFA) analysis to investigate the effects of additions of carbon and nitrogen in glucose and ammonium chloride, respectively, on the soil microbial community in a field experiment lasting three years in the Garwood Valley. In the control treatment, the total ELFA concentration was small by comparison with temperate soils, but very large when expressed relative to the soil organic carbon concentration, indicating efficient conversion of soil organic carbon into microbial biomass and rapid turnover of soil organic carbon. The ELFA concentrations increased significantly in response to carbon additions, indicating that carbon supply was the main constraint to microbial activity. The large ELFA concentrations relative to soil organic carbon and the increases in ELFA response to organic carbon addition are both interpreted as evidence for the soil microbial community containing organisms with efficient scavenging mechanisms for carbon. The diversity of the ELFA profiles declined in response to organic carbon addition, suggesting the responses were driven by a portion of the community increasing in dominance whilst others declined.

Numbers of micro-organisms in soils from Wilkes Land varied widely. Bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi occurred in all samples analysed and the numbers of bacteria was positively correlated with the numbers of yeasts, and with pH. Moss protonema and seven species of algae and cyanobacteria were also present and measurable amounts of chlorophylls a, b and c were extracted from some samples. Only a few sites, those with moist sandy or gravelly soils free of extensive moss or lichen cover, contained the single mite species recorded.

Amino acids stimulate the growth rate and growth yield of ruminal micro-organisms, but the basis of this stimulation, in terms of amino acids which most limit growth, has never been fully established. Here, for the first time, a deletion approach was investigated using in vitro incubations of mixed ruminal micro-organisms supplied with a mixture of xylose, starch and cellobiose as energy sources and ammonia plus a complete amino acids mixture or mixtures with a single amino acid omitted as nitrogen sources, enabling the evaluation of the impact on ruminal fermentation of the deletion of a single amino acid from a complete amino acids mixture. Significant effects (P < 0·05) on total gas production were observed after 10 h of incubation when glutamate, glutamine, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, serine, tryptophan or tyrosine were deleted from the amino acids mixture. The only significant effect of an amino acid deletion on volatile fatty acid production at 10 h was with serine (P < 0·05), although the effect of omitting others, including arginine, isoleucine, leucine and phenylalanine, approached significance (P < 0·01). The removal of leucine caused a 0·09 decrease in growth yield (P < 0·05); no other deletion affected the yield significantly (P > 0·05). Net gas production for each treatment was calculated by subtracting gas production in the absence of carbohydrates from gas production in their presence, thus eliminating gas production from amino acids from the values. At all times up to 10 h, the most significant effects on net gas production were found when serine, leucine, or the aromatic amino acids were omitted from the amino acids mixture. Thus, the deletion approach confirmed that no single amino acid limits ruminal fermentation more than any other, although a few, principally phenylalanine, leucine and serine, have a particularly significant rôle in the ruminal fermentation rate of soluble, rapidly degraded materials and/or microbial growth efficiency.

The method of Zinn & Owens (1986; Canadian Journal of Animal Science66, 157–166), based on release of purine bases by HClO4 followed by their precipitation with AgNO3, was used to study recovery of purines from lyophilized rumen microbial or Escherichia coli preparations added to matrices such as cellulose, starch and neutral-detergent fibre. The recovery of purines was poor (approximately 50 %). Under the hydrolysis conditions (12 M-HClO4, 90–95° for 1 h) used in the method of Zinn & Owens (1986), the recovery of purines from the rumen microbial preparations added to matrices measured using an HPLC method was 95–102 %, suggesting that the lower recovery of purines in the method of Zinn & Owens (1986) was not due to incomplete hydrolysis of nucleic acids. Using the HPLC method, adenine and allopurinol (an internal standard) were found to be heat-labile as substantial destruction was observed on heating at 121°. On the other hand, another commonly used internal standard, caffeine, was stable at 121°. A complete hydrolysis of nucleic acids from the rumen microbial preparation was observed with 2·5 ml 0·6 M-HClO4 in a total volume of 3 ml (0·5 M-HClO4 during hydrolysis) at 90–95° for 1 h, and under these conditions adenine, guanine, allopurinol and caffeine were stable. Moreover, under these milder hydrolysis conditions, the recovery of purine bases from the rumen microbial or E. coli preparations added to matrices ranged from 92 to 108 % using the method of Zinn & Owens (1986). Based on the results, changes in hydrolysis conditions have been proposed for accurate determination of purine bases using spectrophotometric or HPLC methods.