The distant Microbial communities in Tibetan alpine meadow based on Geochip 4.0. uncultured bacterium

Due to its high altitude and extreme climate conditions, the Tibetan plateau is a region vulnerable to the impact of climate changes and anthropogenic perturbation, thus understanding how its microbial communities function may be of high importance. Here, we report a study to profile soil microbial structural genes, which infers functional roles of microbial communities, aiming to explore potential microbial responses to climate changes and anthropogenic perturbation. Using a microarray-based metagenomics tool named GeoChip 4.0, we showed that microbial communities in treatment site were distinct, compared with those in control site, e.g. shrubland vs grassland, grazing site vs ungrazing site, or warmer site vs colder site. Substantial variations were apparent in stress, N and C cycling genes, but they were in line with the functional roles of these genes. Overall design: sixty-three samples were collected from four elevations (3200,3400,3600 and 3800 m) along a Tibetan alpine meadow, varied in treatments of grassland or shurbland, grazing or ungrazing, in situ or transplanted; Three replicates in each treatment