Bacterial diversity of mechanic workshops in Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria

Mechanic workshops are commonly located in inner city and suburbs of Lagos, Nigeria. the workshops soil and underground waters are often subject to pollution with hydrocarbons and heavy meta laden spent oil and other wastes, with reports showing these pollutants, especially aromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated aromatics, alkanes, chromium, cadmium, lead, iron, zinc etc at concentrations well above regulatory limits. While reports abound on the physicochemistry of such sites, and there ave been a few on the microbial composition as assayed by cultural method in the last two decades, there is little or no report on high-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) based taxonomic or functional profiling of the sites.This study was therefore embarked upon to determine the prokaryotic communities of 4 selected mechanic workshop soils and also correlate the community diversity with physicochemical properties using multivariate analysis. Composite samples were extracted and the DNA sequenced on PacBio Revio System. The resulting sequences were further processed for bioinformatics and statistical analysis and visualization. The study is expected to provide an insight into the unique phylotypes of these sites, reveal the main environmental drivers of community structure, provide information on pollution index and inform policies with regard to urban-sited mechanic workshops.