Microbial community structure and functions are resilient to metal pollution along two forest soil gradients

ABSTRACT: Despite the global importance of forests, it is virtually unknown how their soil microbial communities adapt at the phylogenetic and functional level to long term metal pollution. Studying twelve sites located along two distinct gradients of metal pollution in Southern Poland revealed that both community composition (via MiSeq Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes) and functional gene potential (using GeoChip 4.2) were highly similar across the gradients despite drastically diverging metal contamination levels. Metal pollution level significantly impacted microbial community structure (p = 0.037), but not bacterial taxon richness. Metal pollution altered the relative abundance of specific bacterial taxa, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Planc

ORGANISM(S): uncultured bacterium

SUBMITTER: Hamed Azarbad 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-59620 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress