In bioremediation applications, non-extremophilic microorganisms are generally used. However, in these applications, the removal of organic pollutants by non-extremophilic microorganisms at high salt concentrations requires a pretreatment process to overcome the negative salt effect. Halophilic microorganisms have important enzymatic structures that allow them to adapt to hypersaline environments. Halophiles stand out as suitable bioremediation agents for the treatment of organic pollutant removal at high salt concentrations because they can effectively use hydrocarbons as sole carbon and energy sources. In this study PICRUSt2 tool was applied to predict bioremediation enzymes of prokaryotic diversity in Tuz Lake using 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing data. As a result of functional analysis, various enzymes related to bioremediation process were detected in Tuz Lake metagenome data. Arsenite transporter ATPase (EC:3.6.3.16), arsenate reductase EC:1.20.4.1), (S)-2-haloacid dehalogenase (EC:3.8.1.2), nitrate reductase (EC:1.7.99.4), and catechol 2,3-dioxygenase (EC:1.13.11.2) enzymes were observed in high abundance. Moreover, the sequences associated with (S)-2-haloacid dehalogenase, selenite water dikinase, mercury (II) reductase, arsenite transporter ATPase and 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase enzymes were showed significant seasonal difference.
Doğan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.