Prokaryotic Community Structure, Abundances, and Potential Ecological Functions in a Mars Analog Salt Lake

Barkol Lake, situated northeast of the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, is a hypersaline lake with abundant sulfate and chloride minerals, which can be a potential analog for microbial saline paleolakes on Mars. The lake water, sediments, and surrounding soils of Barkol Lake were sampled for geochemical analysis and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to investigate the prokaryotic community structure, abundances, interactions, and ecological functions. Results show that (1) prokaryotic community structure differs significantly between biotopes (water, sediment, and soil), with the highest abundances of archaea occurring in water samples and highest prokaryotic diversities in soil samples; (2) archaeal communities are dominated by Halobacterota, Nanoarchaeota, Thermoplasmatota, and Crenarchaeota, while bacterial communities are mainly Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Desulfobacterota, Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadetes, Firmicutes, and Cyanobacteria; (3) the prokaryotic community network for soil is far more complicated and stable than those for water and sediment; (4) soil prokaryotic communities could be significantly affected by environmental factors such as salinity, pH, total sulfur, and Ca²⁺; (5) archaeal communities may play an important role in the nitrogen cycle, while bacterial communities may mainly participate in the sulfur cycle. This study extends the data set of prokaryotic communities for hypersaline environments, which will provide perspectives into identification of the counterparts and help to understand potential microbial interactions and biogeochemical cycles occurring on Mars.