Insertion sequences enrichment in extreme Red sea brine pool vent

Abstract

Mobile genetic elements are major agents of genome diversification and evolution. Limited studies addressed their characteristics, including abundance, and role in extreme habitats. One of the rare natural habitats exposed to multiple-extreme conditions, including high temperature, salinity and concentration of heavy metals, are the Red Sea brine pools. We assessed the abundance and distribution of different mobile genetic elements in four Red Sea brine pools including the world's largest known multiple-extreme deep-sea environment, the Red Sea Atlantis II Deep. We report a gradient in the abundance of mobile genetic elements, dramatically increasing in the harshest environment of the pool. Additionally, we identified a strong association between the abundance of insertion sequences and extreme conditions, being highest in the harshest and deepest layer of the Red Sea Atlantis II Deep. Our comparative analyses of mobile genetic elements in secluded, extreme and relatively non-extreme environments, suggest that insertion sequences predominantly contribute to polyextremophiles genome plasticity.

Insights into Red Sea Brine Pool Specialized Metabolism Gene Clusters Encoding Potential Metabolites for Biotechnological Applications and Extremophile Survival

“…To correlate the microbial communities and how their taxonomic profiles contribute to specialized metabolites production, archaeal and bacterial phyla were investigated and were related to the SMGCs found in each site (Figure 5, Tables S4–S6). The abundance of major archaeal and bacterial phyla in the dataset was previously reported, albeit for the sequence reads not for the assembled contigs [22,36]. However, in this study we focused on bacterial phyla with the potentiality to produce bioactive products; as certain bacterial phyla were reported to produce bioactive compounds such as antibacterial and anticancer agents.…”

“…The study workflow is depicted in Figure 1, and the detailed sample locations are available in Table S1. DNA from Red Sea brine water and sediment samples were previously shotgun sequenced [19,20,22]. In this study we assembled 12,968,227 reads, generating a total of 349,631 contigs (Table 1).…”

“…polyextremophiles may thrive under relatively high pressure, salinity, extreme temperatures, scarce nutrients and different pH conditions [18]. The Red Sea brine pools, including Atlantis II Deep (ATII), Discovery Deep (DD) and Kebrit Deep (KD), are known for polyextremophilic conditions [19,20,21,22]. The largest of the 25 Red Sea brine pools is ATII, which is characteristic by hypersalinity (252 psu), high temperature (~67.1 °C) and high metal content [20,23,24,25].…”

Novel Enzymes From the Red Sea Brine Pools: Current State and Potential

“…Atlantis Deep II, Discovery Deep, and Kebrit are the best studied brine pools of the Red Sea ( Hartmann et al, 1998 ; Swift et al, 2012 ; Schmidt et al, 2015 ). They are located below 1.5 km depth, classifying them as deep-sea brine pools ( Antunes et al, 2011 ; Schmidt et al, 2015 ; Elbehery A. H. A. et al, 2017 ). They display polyextremophilic conditions including (i) high temperatures (up to 60°C or higher); (ii) high salinity (up to seven times higher than the surrounding deep sea water); (iii) low pH values; (iv) highly metalliferous deposits, including iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), cobalt (Co), barium (Ba), silicon (Si), and lithium (Li) in dissolved form, and more rarely silver (Ag) or gold (Au); (v) low dissolved oxygen concentrations (up to 40 times lower than in the “deep zone”); or (vi) completely anaerobic conditions ( Gurvich, 2006 ; Antunes et al, 2011 ).…”