Metagenomic Assessment of Prokaryotic Diversity within Hypersaline Tuz Lake, Turkey

Tuz Lake is the second biggest lake with an extreme hypersaline environment (over 32% (w/v) salt) in Turkey. It is reported that the lake was of marine origin, and its formation began with tensional movements during the Late Cretaceous and the Late Eocene. We conducted this research to determine the prokaryotic diversity of Tuz Lake by metagenomics approach, which is 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of microbial communities in their natural environments. Hence, next-generation sequencing and then bioinformatic analysis was used to investigate the microbial structure of halophilic Bacteria and Archaea in Tuz Lake. Metagenomic analysis of reads revealed that all the archaeal populations in Tuz Lake belonged to the Euryarchaeota and Nanoarchaeaeota phyla. Haloquadratum (34%), Haloparvum (31%), Halonotius (7%), Halorubrum (3%), Halapricum (2%), Halobellus (3%), Natronomonas (1%), Halococcus (1%), and Halobacterium (1%) were found as the dominant archaeal genera. The most abundant and diverse bacterial phyla were Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. The remaining bacterial taxa were assigned to Acetothermia, Cyanobacteria, Firmicutes, and Halanaerobiaeota. Salinibacter (3%), uncultured microorganisms (1%), Pseudomonas (<1%), Arhodomonas (<1%), Halorhodospira (<1%), Chromobacterium (<1%) were the most common genera in bacterial diversity. Monthly and seasonal potential interactions among environmental factors and taxa were investigated. It was detected that several environmental factors such as temperature, salinity, and drought might have significant effects on microbial richness.