Core functional traits of bacterial communities in the Upper Mississippi River show limited variation in response to land cover.

ABSTRACT: Taxonomic characterization of environmental microbial communities via high-throughput DNA sequencing has revealed that patterns in microbial biogeography affect community structure. However, shifts in functional diversity related to variation in taxonomic composition are poorly understood. To overcome limitations due to the prohibitive cost of high-depth metagenomic sequencing, tools to infer functional diversity based on phylogenetic distributions of functional traits have been developed. In this study we characterized functional microbial diversity at 11 sites along the Mississippi River in Minnesota using both metagenomic sequencing and functional-inference-based (PICRUSt) approaches. This allowed us to determine how distance and variation in land cover throughout the river influenced t

SUBMITTER: Staley C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4126211 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature