Acid Mine B1A Metagenome

Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) environments are common on our planet and extend through not-well established acidic niche boundaries, in which three distinct micro-environments may co-exist: water, bed sediments and macroscopic structures (streamers, slimes, mats and snottite-associated growths). Recent data have revealed large-scale differences among microbial consortia inhabiting different AMD sites, including population sequence heterogeneity and gene content. However, there is almost no information on the total and active microbial community in discrete micro-environments in a single AMD site to explain the extent of metabolic variability within a single AMD. Here, we described the microbial community of three distinct streamer-mat shaped macroscopic growths along an AMD formation.