Metagenomic Analysis Reveals Microbial Communities in Lake Qarun – Egypt

Characterization of water quality in Lake Qarun indicated that the water is very poor for irrigation and aquatic life. At the same time, the bacterial community was represented mainly by five bacterial phyla with different proportions: Firmicutes (53%), Proteobacteria (33%), Bacteroidetes (7%), Actinobacteria (5%) and Thermi (1%). Furthermore, metagenomes prediction of bacterial communities using PICRUSt indicated important functional gene families associated with metabolism, environmental information, genetic information processing, and cellular processes. It is worth noting that Benzoate degradation had the highest average relative abundance, followed by aminobenzoate degradation among 18 individual KEGG pathways from xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism which showed higher relative abundance. The obtained data indicate that a different source of pollution in Qarun Lakes has an impact on the bacterial community’s structure, as well as the biota and is expected to cause health problems.