Upper Mississippi River sediment microbiomes impacted by native freshwater mussel assemblages

Native freshwater mussels in a 480 km stretch of the Upper Mississippi River filter over 14 billion gallons of water each day, and in the process, remove tons of algae from the water and sequester tons of nitrogen and carbon into the sediment each day. This study aimed to determine the differences in nitrogen cycling gene abundances from microbial communities with and without mussels present.