Nanopore sequencing-based Metagenomic Study on High-altitude Permafrost and Glacier Aquatic Microbiome

Abstract:

We applied on-site MinION sequencing on the microbiome of high-altitude permafrost in Qilian Mountain (4000m altitude) China. ONT-based long-read metagenomics enabled an effective alternative to NGS-assembly and binning in revealing the ecological function of important microbial populations at genome-level resolution. A Frame-shift correction based ONT reads annotation tool FUNpore was developed. The post-correction long-reads showed encouraging precision and recall in functional prediction. Compared to frozen permafrost soil, the thawed soil showed higher transcriptional activity in denitrification which may lead to the discernible N₂O release in summer. In contrast methane release from thawed permafrost seems of less concern as very active aerobic methane oxidation by Methylomonas was observed in the topsoil and methane generation cannot be detected in batch tests with elevated temperature. Meanwhile putative human pathogens were detected in the glacier melting water indicating water safety concern for direct drink.