Microbial community diversity and eco-genomics functions across sediment regimen of a saline lake

Unlike most saline lakes, the Chinese ones were formed in depressions entirely by runoff from the surrounding topography, hence greatly affected by seasons and variation in salinity, with microbial composition and functions being the most influenced. Determining the nature of key environmental drivers such as microbial dynamics is necessary. Therefore, the current study applied metagenomics study approach to determining the microbial community diversity and functions across sediment regimen (clay [NT], sandstone [FS] and salt-bearing [SY]) of the East Taijinar Salt Lake, China. The result indicated that members of Actinobacterium did not exhibit variability across the sediment types while members of Firmicutes and Proteobacteria showed some variabilities, and had highest dominance in clay (NT) and sandstone (FS) sediment type as compared to the salt-bearing (SY) sediment type. Based on UniFrac, STAMP analyses there was significant differences (P < 0.05), with the weighted-UniFrac approach indicating the highest abundance under the clay sediment type. According to NMDS analysis, there was closer similarity in microbial composition between the clays sediment type (NT) and sandstone (FS). Furthermore, through the cladogram, it was visualized that there was very low representation of bacterial species from the salt-bearing (SY) sediment type as compared to other sediment types. More COG and KEGG pathways were dominant under the clays (NT) sandstone (FS) sediment types as opposed to the salt-based (SY) sediment type. Based on this result, in-depth studies on spatial and temporal variability in microbial community diversity and eco-genomics functions across the sediments of the East Taijinar Salt Lake is recommended.