Climate warming and nutrient enrichment jointly affect microbial functional potentials important to nutrient cycling in shallow-lake mesocosms

Here, we applied a microarray-based metagenomics technology termed GeoChip 5.0 to investigate spring microbial functional genes in mesocosm-simulated shallow lake ecosystems having been undergoing nutrient enrichment and warming for nine years. In our study, we selected 16 fully mixed, outdoor, flow-through mesocosms (diameter 1.9 m, water depth 1 m, retention time ~2.5 months) combining two temperature scenarios (ambient temperature and warming scenario simulating the IPCC A2 + 50% with temperatures 4–5 °C higher than the ambient) and two nutrient levels with four replicates. Approximately 400 to 500 ml of the collected water was used for microbial Geochip analyses.