Recent Trends in Elucidating Newer Insights of Solid and Aquatic Sediment Microbial Diversity

Sediments are derived from continental transport and alluviation of biological products and are found to be rich in nutrients, thus providing habitats for microorganisms. The microorganisms in sediments function in the regulation of nutrient dynamics and biochemical cycles. Understanding microbial diversity in solid and aquatic sediments is crucial for managing the health, resilience, and sustainability of the ecosystem. To characterize the microbial diversity in various environments, culture-based approaches have been optimized, which fail to provide exhaustive details of the majority of microbes, whereas culture-independent methods employ direct extrication of metagenomic DNA from sediments, dodging the issues associated with the former method. Fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), BIOLOG, rRNA slot-blot hybridization, and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis have recently been employed, which uncovered the evolutionary lineages and adaptations of microorganisms in their specific sediment environment. Profiling of some rare microbial taxa, including Archaea, in sediments using advanced approaches could be marked as groundbreaking research from a multivariate perspective and necessary for recognizing the influence of different parameters on the ecological status of sediment ecosystems.