16S rDNA metagenomes of Western Balkans glacial lakes sediments

Since the Balkan Peninsula is situated in the climatic transition between the temperate zone and Mediterranean conditions, it can be assumed that this region will become dryer and warmer in the course of global climatic change. Potential vanishing of glaciers in this part of Europe could endanger existing glacial lakes, which points to the need of conservation and biodiversity studies of this ecological niche. The studies of microbial communities in glacial lakes, especially in southeast Europe are rare and even neglected. It is well recognized that unexplored ecological niches and metabolic potential as well as new molecular frameworks of their microbial communities could be a gold mine of secondary metabolites with importance for biotechnology, medicine and pharmacy. Our goal was to assess the bacterial communities from selected Western Balkans glacial lakes. Selection of lakes was based on exposure to anthropological influences. Thus we analyzed bacterial communities from Plav lake (designated as D in the project, located in the town of Plav), Black lake (designated as C in the project, outside of human settlements but tourist attraction) and Donje Bare lake (isolated lake without significant human impact, designated as Z in the project).

巴尔干半岛地处温带与地中海气候的过渡区域，据此可推测在全球气候变化进程中，该区域将愈发干旱炎热。欧洲这一区域的冰川若发生潜在消融，或将危及现存的冰川湖，这凸显了对这一生态位开展保护与生物多样性研究的必要性。目前针对冰川湖微生物群落的研究，尤其是东南欧地区的此类研究，尚且稀缺甚至被忽视。学界已达成共识：未被探索的生态位、代谢潜力，以及其微生物群落中全新的分子框架，或可成为兼具生物技术、医学与药学应用价值的次生代谢产物的宝库。本研究旨在对巴尔干半岛西部选定冰川湖中的细菌群落进行评估。本次湖泊遴选基于其受人类活动影响的程度展开。据此，我们对以下三处湖泊的细菌群落进行了分析：普拉夫湖（项目代号D，坐落于普拉夫镇内）、布莱克湖（项目代号C，位于人类定居点外但为旅游景点）以及东巴雷湖（受人类活动影响极微的孤立湖泊，项目代号Z）。