Figure 2.

Bacterial genera in the Atlantis II Deep and Discovery Deep brine pools. Bacterial composition in the Atlantis II Deep (ABP) and Discovery (DBP) Deep brine pools was estimated by taxonomically classifying the 16S rRNA fragments identified from metadata reads. Classification at the genus level was performed by using the RDP classifier (Cole et al., 2009). No confidence threshold was applied to the classification, and the best match in the RDP database was used to determine the genus of a fragment. The percentages of bacterial 16S rRNA fragments are shown in parentheses. The minor groups refer to a collection of genera comprising <1% of the total 16S rRNA fragments in both samples. ^#Aromatic degrading bacterial genus; ^*heavy-metal-resistant bacterial genus.