Microbes active in extreme cold are not as well explored as those of other extreme environments. Studies have revealed a substantial microbial diversity and identified cold‐specific microbiome molecular functions. We analyzed the metagenomes and metatranscriptomes of 20 snow samples collected in early and late spring in Svalbard, Norway using mi‐faser, our read‐based computational microbiome function annotation tool. Our results reveal a more diverse microbiome functional capacity and activity in the early‐ vs. late‐spring samples. We also find that functional dissimilarity between the same‐sample metagenomes and metatranscriptomes is significantly higher in early than late spring samples. These findings suggest that early spring samples may contain a larger fraction of DNA of dormant (or dead) organisms, while late spring samples reflect a new, metabolically active community. We further show that the abundance of sequencing reads mapping to the fatty acid synthesis‐related microbial pathways in late spring metagenomes and metatranscriptomes is significantly correlated with the organic acid levels measured in these samples. Similarly, the organic acid levels correlate with the pathway read abundances of geraniol degradation and inversely correlate with those of styrene degradation, suggesting a possible nutrient change. Our study thus highlights the activity of microbial degradation pathways of complex organic compounds previously unreported at low temperatures.
Microbes active in extremely cold environments are not as well explored as those of other extreme environments. Studies have revealed a substantial microbial diversity and identified cold-specific microbiome molecular functions. We analyzed the metagenomes and metatranscriptomes of twenty snow samples collected during early and late spring in Svalbard, Norway using our computational read-based microbiome function annotation tool, mi-faser. Our results revealed a more diverse microbiome functional capacity and activity in the early compared to in the late spring samples. The dissimilarity between the metagenomes and metatranscriptomes of the same samples was also significantly higher in the early spring. These findings suggest that early spring samples may contain a larger fraction of DNA of dormant organisms, while late spring samples reflect a new community that is metabolically active. We additionally showed that the abundance of the sequencing reads mapping to the fatty acid synthesisrelated microbial pathways was significantly positively correlated with organic acid levels, in both our late spring metagenomes and metatranscriptomes. Moreover, the geraniol degradation pathway and the styrene degradation pathway read abundances correlated and inversely correlated, respectively, with the organic acid levels. These results suggest a possible nutrient switch. Our study thus highlights the activity of microbial degradation pathways of complex organic compounds previously unreported at low temperatures.
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