Connecting biodiversity and potential functional role in modern euxinic environments by microbial metagenomics.

ABSTRACT: Stratified sulfurous lakes are appropriate environments for studying the links between composition and functionality in microbial communities and are potentially modern analogs of anoxic conditions prevailing in the ancient ocean. We explored these aspects in the Lake Banyoles karstic area (NE Spain) through metagenomics and in silico reconstruction of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur metabolic pathways that were tightly coupled through a few bacterial groups. The potential for nitrogen fixation and denitrification was detected in both autotrophs and heterotrophs, with a major role for nitrogen and carbon fixations in Chlorobiaceae. Campylobacterales accounted for a large percentage of denitrification genes, while Gallionellales were putatively involved in denitrification, iron oxidation and ca

SUBMITTER: Llorens-Mares T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4478705 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature