Couto Rodríguez, Ricardo L.

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    Analysis of the metabolic and microbial diversity of the solar salterns in Cabo Rojo using metagenomics
    (2018-05) Couto Rodríguez, Ricardo L.; Montalvo Rodríguez, Rafael R.; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Rodríguez Minguela, Carlos M.; Santos Flores, Carlos J.; Vélez Díaz, Ana V.; Department of Biology; Grove, Kurt Allen
    The Cabo Rojo solar salterns is a hypersaline environment located in a tropical climate. Conditions in these environments remain stable throughout the year and therefore allow for the establishment of steady microbial communities. In this study, the aim was to describe the microbial community in terms of composition and metabolic processes across time using metagenomics annotation and binning techniques which provide a more comprehensive approach to assess microbial taxonomic and functional diversity. Furthermore, access to functional gene composition can give us insight into microbial processes being undertaken in these tropical hypersaline environments. Sampling was carried out in December 2014, March 2016 and July 2016; samples of 50L each were filtered through a Millipore pressurized filtering system consisting of two nitrocellulose membranes of pore sizes of 5 μm and 0.22 μm respectively. DNA was extracted from the material collected on the 0.22 μm membrane using physical-chemical methods and sequenced using paired end Illumina technologies. The sequencing effort produced 3 paired end libraries that averaged 32 million reads that were subsequently assembled into 3 metagenomes. The microbial diversity was dominated in all three samples by the phylum Euryarchaeota, followed by Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. However, assessment at the genus level revealed a change in predominance across all three samples with Salinibacter predominating in the first sample whereas Halorubrum and Halogeometricum predominated in the second and third samples respectively. Possible factors influencing this dynamic community could be unusual rain events as well as anthropogenic impact. Functional gene composition revealed processes related to nitrogen reduction, carbon fixation and sulfur metabolism. Binning efforts returned 6 bins that were further analyzed taxonomically. Five of these genomes were related to the halophilic archaeal genera Natronomonas, Haloferax, Haloquadratum and Halomicrobium and based on Amino Acid Identity (AAI) are most likely novel organisms. The last bin was related to the Bacteroidetes and could represent a novel genus within this phylum based on AAI. These results show a microbial community different to that encountered in other hypersaline environments worldwide and also indicates the presence of putative novel organisms.