Taxonomic and Stress-Response Genomic Profiles Link Geographically Distant Hypersaline Microbes Scripts and Datasets

Here, we reconstructed 164 medium- to high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes from Great Salt Lake sediments and compared them with >7,000 publicly available genomes representing 69 additional regional populations spanning freshwater, marine, soil, sediment, saline, hypersaline, and heavy metal-impacted environments.

Despite broad taxonomic variation, Great Salt Lake consistently clustered most closely with hypersaline sediment communities from Oman across multiple taxonomic ranks, with Kulunda Steppe, Russia, forming a broader associated group. Importantly, this relationship extended beyond taxonomy; Great Salt Lake and Oman also showed similar distributions of genes associated with heavy metal homeostasis, detoxification, efflux, and osmotic and oxidative stress, and their association was recovered in finer-scale biosynthetic gene cluster profiles.