Identification of carbohydrate metabolism genes in the metagenome of a marine biofilm community shown to be dominated by gammaproteobacteria and bacteroidetes.

ABSTRACT: Polysaccharides are an important source of organic carbon in the marine environment and degradation of the insoluble and globally abundant cellulose is a major component of the marine carbon cycle. Although a number of species of cultured bacteria are known to degrade crystalline cellulose, little is known of the polysaccharide hydrolases expressed by cellulose-degrading microbial communities, particularly in the marine environment. Next generation 454 Pyrosequencing was applied to analyze the microbial community that colonizes and degrades insoluble polysaccharides in situ in the Irish Sea. The bioinformatics tool MG-RAST was used to examine the randomly sampled data for taxonomic markers and functional genes, and showed that the community was dominated by members of the Gammaproteobacter

SUBMITTER: Edwards JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3966224 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature