Metabarcoding of the Three Domains of Life in Aquatic Saline Ecosystems

Abstract

High-throughput amplicon sequencing, known as metabarcoding, is a powerful technique to decipher exhaustive microbial diversity considering specific gene markers. While most of the studies investigating ecosystem functioning through microbial diversity targeted only one domain of life, either bacteria, or archaea or microeukaryotes, the remaining challenge in microbial ecology is to uncover the integrated view of microbial diversity occurring in ecosystems. Indeed, interactions occurring between the different microbial counterparts are now recognized having a great impact on stability and resilience of ecosystems. Here, we summarize protocols describing sampling, molecular, and simultaneous metabarcoding of bacteria, archaea, and microeukaryotes, as well as a bioinformatic pipeline allowing the study of exhaustive microbial diversity in natural aquatic saline samples.