Microbial community structure in lake and wetland sediments from a high Arctic polar desert revealed by targeted transcriptomics.

ABSTRACT: While microbial communities play a key role in the geochemical cycling of nutrients and contaminants in anaerobic freshwater sediments, their structure and activity in polar desert ecosystems are still poorly understood, both across heterogeneous freshwater environments such as lakes and wetlands, and across sediment depths. To address this question, we performed targeted environmental transcriptomics analyses and characterized microbial diversity across three depths from sediment cores collected in a lake and a wetland, located on Cornwallis Island, NU, Canada. Microbial communities were characterized based on 16S rRNA and two functional gene transcripts: mcrA, involved in archaeal methane cycling and glnA, a bacterial housekeeping gene implicated in nitrogen metabolism. We show that meth

SUBMITTER: Stoeva MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3940601 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature