Metagenomic 16s rRNA investigation of microbial communities in the Black Sea estuaries in South-West of Ukraine.

Abstract

The Black Sea estuaries represent interfaces of the sea and river environments. Microorganisms that inhabit estuarine water play an integral role in all biochemical processes that occur there and form unique ecosystems. There are many estuaries located in the Southern-Western part of Ukraine and some of them are already separated from the sea. The aim of this research was to determine the composition of microbial communities in the Khadzhibey, Dniester and Sukhyi estuaries by metagenomic 16S rDNA analysis. This study is the first complex analysis of estuarine microbiota based on isolation of total DNA from a biome that was further subjected to sequencing. DNA was extracted from water samples and sequenced on the Illumina Miseq platform using primers to the V4 variable region of the 16S rRNA gene. Computer analysis of the obtained raw sequences was done with QIIME (Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology) software. As the outcome, 57970 nucleotide sequences were retrieved. Bioinformatic analysis of bacterial community in the studied samples demonstrated a high taxonomic diversity of Prokaryotes at above genus level. It was shown that majority of 16S rDNA bacterial sequences detected in the estuarine samples belonged to phyla Cyanobacteria, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, Planctomycetes. The Khadhzibey estuary was dominated by the Proteobacteria phylum, while Dniester and Sukhyi estuaries were characterized by dominance of Cyanobacteria. The differences in bacterial populations between the Khadzhibey, Dniester and Sukhyi estuaries were demonstrated through the Beta-diversity analysis. It showed that the Khadzhibey estuary's microbial community significantly varies from the Sukhyi and Dniester estuaries. The majority of identified bacterial species is known as typical inhabitants of marine environments, however, for 2.5% of microbial population members in the studied estuaries no relatives were determined.