A Metagenomic Survey of Serpentinites and Nearby Soils in Taiwan

The serpentinite of Taiwan is originated from the subduction zone of the Eurasian plate and the Philippine Sea plate. Many small bodies of serpentinite are scattered around the lands of the East Rift Valley, which are also one of the major agricultural areas in Taiwan. Since microbial communities play a role both on weathering process and soil recovery, uncovering the microbial compositions in serpentinites and surrounding soils may help people to understand the roles of microorganisms on serpentinites during the nature weathering process. In this study, microorganisms growing on the surface of serpentinites, in the surrounding soil, and agriculture soils that are miles of horizontal distance away from serpentinite were collected. Next generation sequencing (NGS) was carried out to examine the metagenomics of uncultured microbial community in these samples. The metagenomics were further clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) to analyze relative abundance, heatmap of OTUs, and principal coordinates analysis (PCoA). Our data revealed the different types of geographic material had their own distinct structures of microbial community. In serpentinites, the heatmaps based on the phylogenetic pattern showed that the OTUs distributions were similar in phyla of Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and WPS-1/WPS-2. On the other hand, the heatmaps of phylogenetic pattern of agriculture soils showed that the OTUs distributions in phyla of Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, WPS-1/WPS-2, and Proteobacteria were similar. In soil nearby the serpentinite, some clusters of OTUs in phyla of Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, and WPS-1/WPS-2 have disappeared. Our data provided evidence regarding kinetic evolutions of microbial communities in different geographic materials.