Metagenomics insights into Phylogenetic and Functional Diversity of Halophilic Communities inhabiting solar saltern in North Sinai, Egypt

Multi-pond systems are commonly used to make them. Saline environments ranging from intermediate to hyper-saline water (brine) and sediment, the later are characteristic of solar saltern in North Sinai.

Metagenomics by 16S rRNA Illumina amplicon sequencing and bioinformatical analysis was used to explore the microbial diversity of Solar Saltern and the halophilic communities were characterized. A total of 237,899 (brine) and 59,680 (sediment) reads were collected. A microbiome featuring Archaea was discovered using 16S rRNA sequencing (20% from brine and 0.28% from sediment) The domain Archaea (20%) comprising phylum Euryarchaeota (19.9%) was the most abundant, followed by Crenarchaeota (0.02%) and Thaumarchaeota (0.01%), while domain Eubacteria (13.37%) included phylum Proteobacteria (4.5%), Bacteroidetes (3.7%), Actinobacteria (3.4%), and Firmicutes (3.3%).