Bacterial community structure and its regulating factors in the intertidal sediment along the Liaodong Bay of Bohai Sea, China

Abstract

Investigating the entire species composition of the microorganisms is crucial to understand their roles in the biogeochemical cycles. Metagenomic DNA was extracted from six intertidal sediment samples along the Liaodong Bay of Bohai Sea, China, and was sequenced which yielded a total of 64,496 high-quality sequences from 83,485 reads, with an average read length of 463 bp. The sequences were assigned to 20,718 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) which belong to 42 phyla, 90 classes and 376 genera. At the different taxonomic levels, both the dominants and their abundances varied significantly among the six sites. Phylum Proteobacteria predominated in all the six samples, however, not only the abundance of this phylum varied significantly but also the proportions of Alpha-, Beta-, Gamma-, and delta- and epsilon-Proteobacteria varied greatly. The site sediment median grain size and dissolved oxygen (DO) revealed to be key factors regulating the observed significant differences in the bacterial community between sampling sites. In addition, the bacterial composition might be more sensitive than the richness and diversity to the studied environmental conditions.

Response of microbial communities to bioturbation by artificially introducing macrobenthos to mudflat sediments for in situ bioremediation in a typical semi-enclosed bay, southeast China

“…Our results showed that the microbial diversities were high in the intertidal sediments of Sansha Bay, with a average of 3766 ± 76 OTUs per sample. The Shannon index (varied between 6.72 and 6.9, Table 3) was comparable and a slightly lower than previous studies in intertidal sediments in Liaodong Bay (6.72-7.54, Zheng et al, 2014), and Bohai Bay (7.17 and 7.19, Wang et al, 2013), China.…”

Distribution and diversity of bacterioplankton communities in subtropical seawater around Xiamen Island, China

“…studies of bacterial communities have focused upon cultureindependent molecular techniques, for instance, quantitative PCR (qPCR), denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), clone library and the next generation sequencing (NGS), that circumvent the limitations of cultivation. The NGS technologies, such as 454 pyrosequencing, have recently become more and more popular among microbiologists investigating microbial community structures (Zheng et al 2014;Song and Wang 2015). Pyrosequencing is powerful for detecting microbial diversity, even the rare species, thereby providing a deep insight into the microbial communities (Huber et al 2007;Zheng et al 2014).…”

Effects of Heavy Metal and Nutrients on Benthic Microbial Communities in Freshwater Sediment of Poyang Lake (China)

“…Microbes regulating and influencing many ecosystem processes such as nutrient transformation and organic matter decomposition [2] could function as potential bio-indicators of pollution and environmental variation. All of this makes a freshwater sediment system a suitable environment to study the mechanism of complex geochemical recycling processes.…”