Journal of Microbial & Biochemical Technology

Defining the prokaryotic biodiversity of the salterns of Margherita di Savoia (Italy) by amplicon based next generation sequencing analysis

Joint Event on 4^th World Congress and Expo on Applied Microbiology & 2^nd International Conference on Food Microbiology

November 29-December 01, 2017 Madrid, Spain

Mariateresa Volpicella

Bari University, Italy

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Microb Biochem Technol

Abstract:

Background: Marine salterns are excellent sites for studying the dynamics of the prokaryotic biodiversity at increasing salt concentrations. Metagenomics offers the most direct approach for reliably assessing the microbial diversity including uncultivable prokaryotes. Salterns of Margherita di Savoia (MdS) are located on the East-cost of South Italy. They are the largest salterns in Europe, with a yet unexplored microbiota composition. Objective: Defining the microbiota composition of the salterns of MdS in ponds with increasing salt concentrations. Methodology: eDNA purified from nine ponds with salt concentration in the 4.9-36% range was used for PCR amplification of the V5-V6 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene. NGS of amplicon libraries was carried out by the Illumina MiSeq platform. Obtained reads were analyzed using the BioMas software for taxonomic classification. Results & Conclusions: The microbiota composition of the MdS salterns resulted in a peculiar composition of prokaryotes, quantitatively different from that of other salterns of the Mediterranean area. For example, Archaea are absent at low salt concentrations (4.9-8.4%) and reach their highest concentrations (30-35%) in the high-salinity ponds. In similar ponds of the salterns of Santa Pola (Spain), their presence has been estimated around 90%. Conversely, in the high-salinity ponds of the MdS salterns, the Eubacteria Salinibacter genus is the most represented genus. This study is of particular interest, not only to define the microbiota composition in different salt concentrations, but also for better addressing future functional metagenomics analysis aimed at the identification of biotechnological useful extremozymes.

Biography :

Mariateresa Volpicella has completed her PhD and Postdoctoral studies at the A Moro University. From 2004 she is Researcher in Molecular Biology at the Department of Biosciences, Biotechnology and Biopharmaceutics at the University of Bari. She has published 25 papers in reputed journal. Her recent research activity involves studies on bacteria adaptation to environmental stresses by genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics approaches, and also metagenomics of extreme environments.