Epipelagic microbiome of the Small Aral Sea: Metagenomic structure and ecological diversity


Alexyuk M. Bogoyavlenskiy A. Alexyuk P. Moldakhanov Y. Berezin V. Digel I.
January 2021Blackwell Publishing Ltd

MicrobiologyOpen
2021#10Issue 1

Microbial diversity studies regarding the aquatic communities that experienced or are experiencing environmental problems are essential for the comprehension of the remediation dynamics. In this pilot study, we present data on the phylogenetic and ecological structure of microorganisms from epipelagic water samples collected in the Small Aral Sea (SAS). The raw data were generated by massive parallel sequencing using the shotgun approach. As expected, most of the identified DNA sequences belonged to Terrabacteria and Actinobacteria (40% and 37% of the total reads, respectively). The occurrence of Deinococcus-Thermus, Armatimonadetes, Chloroflexi in the epipelagic SAS waters was less anticipated. Surprising was also the detection of sequences, which are characteristic for strict anaerobes—Ignavibacteria, hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria, and archaeal methanogenic species. We suppose that the observed very broad range of phylogenetic and ecological features displayed by the SAS reads demonstrates a more intensive mixing of water masses originating from diverse ecological niches of the Aral-Syr Darya River basin than presumed before.

ecological structure , metagenomics , microbial diversity , shotgun sequencing , Small Aral Sea

Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи

Research and Production Center for Microbiology and Virology, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Institute for Bioengineering, Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Jülich, Germany

Research and Production Center for Microbiology and Virology
Institute for Bioengineering

10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель

Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026