Revealing Heavy Metal Resistances in the Yanomami Microbiome

BACKGROUNDThe Amazon hosts invaluable and unique biodiversity as well as mineral resources. As a consequence, there are large illegal and artisanal gold mining areas in indigenous territories. Mercury has been used in gold mining, and some are released into the environment and atmosphere, primarily affecting indigenous as the Yanomami. In addition, other heavy metals have been associated with gold mining and other metal-dispersing activities in the region. OBJECTIVEInvestigation of the Yanomami gut microbiome focusing on metal resistance. METHODSMetagenomic data from the Yanomami gut microbiome were assembled into contigs, and their putative proteins were matched to a database of metal resistance proteins. FINDINGSMost identified proteins have the potential to confer resistance to multiple metals (two or more), followed by mercury, copper, zinc, chromium, arsenic, and others. Operons with potential resistance to mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, zinc, copper, copper/silver, and cobalt/nickel were identified. Mercury resistance operon was the most abundant, even though a diversity of operons in the Yanomami microbiome was observed to have the potential to confer resistance to various metals CONCLUSIONThe Yanomami gut microbiome gene composition shows that these people have been exposed directly or indirectly to mercury and other heavy metals. SponsorshipsThis study was partly financed by the Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); and PAEF (IOC-023-FIO-18-2-47).