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Taxonomic structure and potential nitrogen metabolism of microbial assemblage in a large hypereutrophic steppe lake

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Abstract

Recent studies have expanded the interests about microbial community and function following the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing techniques in the freshwater ecosystem. In this study, we aimed to attain a deep understanding of microbial community structure and potential nitrogen metabolism in Hulun Lake, a shallow hypereutrophic steppe lake in the Mongolian Plateau in China. The result demonstrated that cyanobacteria were the most dominant phylum. Network analysis showed both intra- and inter-phylum co-occurrence were pervasive, and there were modular structures in the microbial assemblages. The cluster dominated by proteobacteria was mainly negatively connected to the cluster dominated by both proteobacteria and actinobacteria. Cyanobacteria were tightly clustered together and positively connected to these two clusters. The major nitrogen metabolism pathways were glutamine synthetase–glutamate synthase and assimilatory nitrate reduction, indicating the nitrogen was mainly retained in the lake by microbial uptake. Cyanobacteria contributed 43.25% gene reads involved in the overall nitrogen metabolism but mainly contributed to assimilatory nitrate reduction and nitrogen fixation, aggravating the lake eutrophication. This study adds to our knowledge of microbial assemblages and nitrogen metabolism in the shallow hypereutrophic lake and provided an insight understanding for the purposes of lake ecosystem’s protection and efficient management in the Mongolian Plateau.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for the comments, to Mr. Bai and Mr. Xin for their great assistance in the field, to Dr. Lu Tan for the water chemistry analyses.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41671048 and 51439007). This study was also supported by the Project of the State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin (SKL2018CG02), National Key R & D Program of China (2017YFC0404506), and the IWHR Research and Development Support Program (WE0145B532017).

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Correspondence to Ze Ren or Wenqi Peng.

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Qu, X., Zhang, M., Yang, Y. et al. Taxonomic structure and potential nitrogen metabolism of microbial assemblage in a large hypereutrophic steppe lake. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 21151–21160 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05411-8

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