Аннотация:Sponges comprise complex microbial communities, which differ in taxonomic composition from those of the surrounding seawater. Modern sequencing technology allows us to characterize the diversity of microorganisms in the communities and predict their properties. Since marine sponges of the cold waters remain less studied compared to those from tropical and subtropical regions, we focused on the specimens collected in the White Sea. In this work, for the first time, we applied a metagenomic approach to the analysis of microbial communities associated with sponges from the Russian Arctic.