Study of Archaeal Diversity in the Arctic Meltwater Lake Region

• Published in: Biology
• Main Authors: Yiling Qin, Nengfei Wang, Li Zheng, Qinxin Li, Long Wang, Xiaoyu Xu, Xiaofei Yin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2023
• Subjects: Arctic Ny-Ålesund; meltwater lakes; high-throughput sequencing; archaea diversity; soil physicochemical properties; WGCNA; Biology (General); QH301-705.5; Arctic; Ny-Ålesund; Ny Ålesund
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/biology12071023; https://doaj.org/article/a150e1f809bf4100acd872fdb7b05d50

Two typical lakes formed from meltwater in the Ny-Ålesund area were taken as the study subjects in 2018. To investigate the archaeal community compositions of the two lakes, 16S rRNA genes from soil samples from the intertidal and subtidal zones of the two lakes were sequenced with high throughput. At the phylum level, the intertidal zone was dominated by Crenarchaeota and the subtidal zone was dominated by Halobacter; at the genus level, the intertidal zone was dominated by Nitrososphaeraceae_unclassified and Candidatus_ Nitrocosmicus , while the subtidal zone was dominated by Methanoregula . The soil physicochemical factors pH, moisture content (MC), total organic carbon (TOC), total organic nitrogen (TON), nitrite nitrogen (NO 2 − -N), and nitrate nitrogen (NO 3 − -N) were significantly different in the intertidal and subtidal zones of the lake. By redundancy analysis, the results indicated that NH 4 + -N, SiO 3 2− -Si, MC, NO 3 − -N, and NO 2 − -N have had highly significant effects on the archaeal diversity and distribution. A weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to search for hub archaea associated with physicochemical factors. The results suggested that these physicochemical factors play important roles in the diversity and structure of the archaeal community at different sites by altering the abundance of certain hub archaea. In addition, Woesearchaeales was found to be the hub archaea genus at every site.