Marine microbial diversity of off-Terengganu coastal sediment in South China Sea

Abstract

Marine bacteria play a vital role in regulating global biochemical cycle for billions of years, and their function has been widely explored for the past fifty years. Marine bacteria exploration is considered as difficult and precarious, but every finding is fruitful in providing information to generate a better understanding of its purpose in the seawater. Marine bacteria exploration in Malaysia coastline is considered as new with no impactful data to represent the bacteria distribution in Malaysia’s coastline, specifically heading towards the South China Sea. The purpose of this study is to assess bacteria diversity off-Terengganu coast as the foremost marine bacteria abundance screening in these areas. In this study, surface sea sediment that contains a variety of bacteria cells is collected in three random locations with three different depths. The DNA obtained from the cell extraction was identified with Next Generation Sequence method, which specifically targeted 16SrDNA V3-V4 properties to obtain the overall bacterial metagenomic profile. Results showed that off-Terengganu coast, bacteria diversity consisted of 25518 amplicons of 3301 unique OTUs, which signify 27 phyla. The OTU abundance decreased gradually with depth of sediment in the sea. The metagenomic profile revealed two sulphur-degrading bacteria were dominant in the surveyed area. Sulfurovum genus dominate overall bacteria community in two locations situated in the northeast area of sampling stations. Conversely, Pseudoalteromonas dominated the overall bacterial community in the southeast coastline. The Physical-geochemical analysis revealed that all surveyed areas contained sulphur, oil, grease, gasoline, diesel, and mineral oil, which perhaps are influencing sulphur-degraded bacteria community growth in the surveyed area. There is no concrete evidence to link Sulfurovum and Pseudoalteromonas as pathogenic bacteria that causes illness to the human. However, there are possibility that the surveyed areas are anthropogenically polluted and further physical-geochemical analysis is required. In conclusion, the research findings suggested the necessity to conduct a broader bacteria diversity research, such as bacterial dispersion scale, and community variation in order to measure an inordinate extent of environmental pollution in the surveyed areas.