Integrated multi-omics analyses reveal microbial community resilience to fluctuating low oxygen in the East China sea

Climate change and eutrophication are accelerating ocean deoxygenation, leading to a global decline in oxygen levels. The East China Sea, frequently experiencing deoxygenation events, harbors diverse microbial communities. However, the response of these communities to the changing deoxygenation dynamics remains poorly understood. Here, we explored the composition and function of microbial communities inhabiting seawaters of the Changjiang Estuary and offshore areas. Our findings suggested that neutral processes significantly influenced the assembly of these communities. The overall bacterial composition demonstrated remarkable high stability across the oxygen gradient. Salinity exhibited a significantly stronger correlation with bacterial community structure than dissolved oxygen. Both metagenomics and metaproteomics revealed that all of the samples exhibited similar functional community structures. Heterotrophic metabolism dominated these sites, as evidenced by a diverse array of transporters and metabolic enzymes for organic matter uptake and utilization, which constituted a significant portion of the expressed proteins. O