Hypersaline Lake Urmia: a potential hotspot for microbial genomic variation

Lake Urmia located in Iran is a hypersaline environment with a salinity of about 27% (w/v). Metagenomic analyses of water samples collected from six locations in the lake exhibited a microbial community dominated by representatives of the family Haloferacaceae (69.8%), mainly those affiliated to only two genera, Haloquadratum (59.3%) and Halonotius (9.1%). Similar to other hypersaline lakes, the bacterial community was dominated by Salinibacter ruber (23.3%). Genomic variation analysis by inspecting single nucleotide variations (SNVs) and insertions/deletions (INDELs) exhibited a high level of SNVs and insertions, most likely through transformation for abundant taxa in the Lake Urmia community. We suggest that the extreme conditions of Lake Urmia and specifically its high ionic concentrations could potentially increase the SNVs and insertions, which can consequently hamper the assembly and genome reconstruction from metagenomic reads of Lake Urmia.

Automated summary

Lake Urmia in Iran is a hypersaline environment with a salinity of about 27%. Metagenomic analysis revealed that the microbial community in the lake is dominated by Haloferacaceae family (69.8%), mainly Haloquadratum (59.3%) and Halonotius (9.1%). The bacterial community is mainly composed of Salinibacter ruber (23.3%). Genomic variation analysis showed a high level of SNVs and insertions in Lake Urmia's community, possibly due to transformation caused by the extreme conditions and high ionic concentrations.