Enhanced metabolic potentials and functional gene interactions of microbial stress response towards high elevation in freshwater lakes. Enhanced metabolic potentials and functional gene interactions of microbial stress response towards high elevation in freshwater lakes

Here, we applied a microarray-based metagenomics technology termed GeoChip 5.0 to examined functional gene structure of microbes in four lakes at low and high elevations of approximately 530 and 4,600 m a.s.l., respectively. Overall design: In this study, to investigate the influence of elevation on microbial functional genes in aquatic environments, we focused on four shallow freshwater lakes at comparable elevations, two HELs (at 4,652 m and 4,608 m, respectively) and two LELs (at 530 m and 525 m, respectively), at Siguniang Mountain in Sichuan province, China. Six sampling sites were set in each lake. At each site, approximately 1 L of water was collected from surface waters (top 50 cm) for microbial Geochip analyses