Uncovering the biosynthetic potential of Production Water Metagenomes

Production waters from oil and gas reservoirs have been shown to harbor diverse microbial communities. These microbial communities contain a wealth of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) that encode for the biosynthesis of natural products with potential industrial and medical applications. In this study, we aimed to uncover the biosynthetic potential of production water metagenomes by analyzing the genomic content of microbial communities found in these environments. In this study, we acquired the sequencing data from production water samples collected from the Shengli Oil Field, in China (PRJNA635524). We used a combination of genome assembly and binning using the nf-core/MAG pipeline and the nf-core/funcscan pipeline to identify biosynthetic gene clusters in the assembled genomes. We generated 93 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from the production water metagenomes, covering both Archaeal and Bacterial taxa. We detected a total of 88 biosynthetic gene clusters among the 93 MAGs. These BGCs cover many classes described in the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster (MiBIG) database, indicating the high biosynthetic potential of the microbial communities in these environments. Moreover, we found biosynthetic gene clusters in as of yet undescribed bacterial and archaeal taxa, which suggests the potential for the discovery of new natural products. Our findings highlight the importance of exploring these environments, since they can lead to the discovery of new taxa with high biosynthetic potential, which could be useful for medical and industrial applications, such as pharmaceutics and bioremediation.