Bacterial diversity in the guts of sea cucumbers (apostichopus japonicus) and shrimps (litopenaeus vannamei) investigated with Tag-Encoded 454 pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes

Abstract

Bacterial diversities in the guts of sea cucumbers (Apostichopus japonicus) and shrimps (Litopenaeus vannamei) were investigated using barcoded or tag-encoded 454 pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes. In sea cucumbers, most of sequences were related to two genera, the genus Propionigenium in the phylum Fusobacteria and an unclassified genus in the family Flavobacteriaceae of phylum Bacteroidetes. Shrimps showed various kinds of genera including Lactococcus, Leuconostoc, Prochlorococcus, and Vibrio as well as the unclassified genera in the families, Flavobacteriaceae, Rhodobacteraceae, Desulfobulbaceae, and Helicobacteraceae and in the order Mycoplasmatales. Unclassified genera containing environmental sequences only are more than half of genera from sea cucumbers and shrimps. Sea cucumbers and shrimps could be unexplored sources of novel microbes and the bacterial diversity of them was revealed by high throughput 454 pyrosequencing. © 2013. The Microbiological Society of Korea.