title: Impacts of the Three Gorges Dam on microbial structure and potential function.
abstract: The Three Gorges Dam has significantly altered ecological and environmental conditions within the reservoir region, but how these changes affect bacterioplankton structure and function is unknown. Here, three widely accepted metagenomic tools were employed to study the impact of damming on the bacterioplankton community in the Xiangxi River. Our results indicated that bacterioplankton communities were both taxonomically and functionally different between backwater and riverine sites, which represent communities with and without direct dam effects, respectively. There were many more nitrogen cycling Betaproteobacteria (e.g., Limnohabitans), and a higher abundance of functional genes and KEGG orthology (KO) groups involved in nitrogen cycling in the riverine sites, suggesting a higher level of bacterial activity involved in generating more nitrogenous nutrients for the growth of phytoplankton. Additionally, the KO categories involved in carbon and sulfur metabolism, as well as most of the detected functional genes also showed clear backwater and riverine patterns. As expected, these diversity patterns all significantly correlated with environmental characteristics, confirming that the bacterioplankton communities in the Xiangxi River were really affected by environmental changes from the Three Gorges Dam. This study provides a first comparative metagenomic insight for evaluating the impacts of the large dam on microbial function.
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China [2] Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
authors.forename: Qingyun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Yonghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bi
authors.affiliation: 1] Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA [2] CAS Key Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
authors.forename: Zhili
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
authors.forename: Liyou
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
authors.forename: Joy D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Van Nostrand
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
authors.forename: Zhou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China [2] Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jinjin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China [2] Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Zhengyu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Yuhe
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: 1] Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA [2] State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China [3] Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jizhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002681:China; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D014644:Genetic Variation; D010839:Phytoplankton / Q000502:physiology; D020560:Proteobacteria / Q000502:physiology; D045483:Rivers / Q000382:microbiology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D014871:Water Microbiology; D060753:Water Quality