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Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China

Almost half of the groundwater in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) contains salt water originally derived from paleo-seawater due to the Holocene transgression, which then generates intense physicochemical gradients in the mixing zone between freshwater and saltwater. Although some studies have been cond...

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Autores principales: Sang, Shilei, Zhang, Xiaoying, Dai, Heng, Hu, Bill X., Ou, Hao, Sun, Liwei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6251883/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30470770
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35350-2
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author Sang, Shilei
Zhang, Xiaoying
Dai, Heng
Hu, Bill X.
Ou, Hao
Sun, Liwei
author_facet Sang, Shilei
Zhang, Xiaoying
Dai, Heng
Hu, Bill X.
Ou, Hao
Sun, Liwei
author_sort Sang, Shilei
collection PubMed
description Almost half of the groundwater in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) contains salt water originally derived from paleo-seawater due to the Holocene transgression, which then generates intense physicochemical gradients in the mixing zone between freshwater and saltwater. Although some studies have been conducted on the hydrological and geochemical characteristics of groundwater in the PRD to monitor the intrusion of seawater, little attention has been paid to the microbial community of this particular region. In this study, we implemented a high-throughput sequencing analysis to characterize the microbial communities along a salinity gradient in the PRD aquifer, China. Our results indicated that the microbial community composition varied significantly depending on the salinity of the aquifer. The presence of abundant anaerobic microorganisms of the genera Desulfovibrio and Methanococcus in certain saltwater samples may be responsible for the gas generation of H(2)S and CH(4) in the stratum. In saline water samples (TDS > 10 g/L), the linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis found two biomarkers that usually live in marine environments, and the aquifers of the PRD still contained large quantity of saltwater, indicating that the impact of the paleo-seawater has lasted to this day. The predictive metagenomic analysis revealed that the metabolic pathways present in the groundwater samples studied, included the degradation of pesticides and refractory organics (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), atrazine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), matter cycling (methane, nitrogen and sulfur), and inorganic ion and mineral metabolites. This study can help enhance our understanding of the composition of the microbial assemblages and its implications as an environmental indicator in an aquifer affected by saltwater intrusion.
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spelling pubmed-62518832018-11-29 Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China Sang, Shilei Zhang, Xiaoying Dai, Heng Hu, Bill X. Ou, Hao Sun, Liwei Sci Rep Article Almost half of the groundwater in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) contains salt water originally derived from paleo-seawater due to the Holocene transgression, which then generates intense physicochemical gradients in the mixing zone between freshwater and saltwater. Although some studies have been conducted on the hydrological and geochemical characteristics of groundwater in the PRD to monitor the intrusion of seawater, little attention has been paid to the microbial community of this particular region. In this study, we implemented a high-throughput sequencing analysis to characterize the microbial communities along a salinity gradient in the PRD aquifer, China. Our results indicated that the microbial community composition varied significantly depending on the salinity of the aquifer. The presence of abundant anaerobic microorganisms of the genera Desulfovibrio and Methanococcus in certain saltwater samples may be responsible for the gas generation of H(2)S and CH(4) in the stratum. In saline water samples (TDS > 10 g/L), the linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis found two biomarkers that usually live in marine environments, and the aquifers of the PRD still contained large quantity of saltwater, indicating that the impact of the paleo-seawater has lasted to this day. The predictive metagenomic analysis revealed that the metabolic pathways present in the groundwater samples studied, included the degradation of pesticides and refractory organics (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), atrazine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), matter cycling (methane, nitrogen and sulfur), and inorganic ion and mineral metabolites. This study can help enhance our understanding of the composition of the microbial assemblages and its implications as an environmental indicator in an aquifer affected by saltwater intrusion. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6251883/ /pubmed/30470770 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35350-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Sang, Shilei
Zhang, Xiaoying
Dai, Heng
Hu, Bill X.
Ou, Hao
Sun, Liwei
Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title_full Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title_fullStr Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title_full_unstemmed Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title_short Diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the Pearl River Delta, China
title_sort diversity and predictive metabolic pathways of the prokaryotic microbial community along a groundwater salinity gradient of the pearl river delta, china
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6251883/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30470770
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35350-2
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