Complete biome capture as an alternative method for stream water
quality studies
The metabarcoding approach applied in the present study is a potential
cost effective and fast alternative to existing metagenomics-based
analyses for biomonitoring as it targets specific genes selected to
represent a given taxonomic affiliation, thereby capturing all three
domains of life. The use of domain specific indicator genes facilitates
detailed analysis covering the majority of ecosystem diversity, thereby
exploiting the opportunity to capture previously undescribed taxonomic
diversity. While the databases for ribosomal target gene sequences fromBacteria and Archaea are good, they remain relatively poor
for eukaryotic organisms, especially within the invertebrates. Attempts
to fill the gaps in reference databases are ongoing as part of national
and international Barcode of Life projects (e.g. NorBOL, GBOL, and
SwissBOL) (Jinbo, Kato, & Ito, 2011). However, biome profiling for
fauna or flora indexing does not necessarily have to provide full
taxonomic descriptions and affiliations. The results obtained in this
study clearly show that members of all three domains reflect the
ecological status of the sampled location. Furthermore, the results
provide evidence for the presence of potential indicator organisms
within all three domains of life, which may provide a potential for
alternative water quality assessment.
In conclusion, simultaneous analysis of Bacteria , Archaeaand Eukaryota using high-throughput amplicon sequencing was shown
to be a promising method for convenient and fast assessment of stream
water quality. Domain-specific biome profiles separated the samples from
50 water bodies with different geological and physiochemical
environments into their respective pre-determined ecological status
classes. The obtained data showed that it was possible to extract
potential new indicator organisms from all three domains. The strongest
correlation between ecological status and community composition was
observed for the Bacteria .