Distinct bacterial community structures and arsenic biotransformation gene profiles in dust

Abundant and diverse bacterial communities and ABGs were detected in dust, revealing significant differences in community structures and ABG profiles compared with those in soil and seawater. Soil was identified as the primary source for both bacterial communities and ABGs in dust through fast expectation-maximization microbial source tracking (FEAST). Acetobacteraceae, which showed significantly greater relative abundance (<i>p</i> < 0.001) in dust than in soil and seawater, was also identified as a keystone taxon in the dust bacterial co-occurrence network. Furthermore, metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) affiliated with Acetobacteraceae were effectively recovered from dust via metagenomic binning, and these MAGs harbored an array of ABGs, indicating that Acetobacteraceae could be important hosts for ABGs in dust. Overall, our findings offer new insights into bacterial communities and ABGs in dust, thereby improving our understanding of arsenic biogeochemical cycling.