Microbial community structures in anoxic freshwater lake sediment along a metal contamination gradient.

ABSTRACT: Contamination, such as by heavy metals, has frequently been implicated in altering microbial community structure. However, this association has not been extensively studied for anaerobic communities, or in freshwater lake sediments. We investigated microbial community structure in the metal-contaminated anoxic sediments of a eutrophic lake that were impacted over the course of 80 years by nearby zinc-smelting activities. Microbial community structure was inferred for bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic populations by evaluating terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) patterns in near-surface sediments collected in triplicate from five areas of the lake that had differing levels of metal contamination. The majority of the fragments in the bacterial and eukaryotic profiles s

SUBMITTER: Gough HL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3105716 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature