Bacterial diseases affecting corals pose an enormous threat to the health of coral reefs. The relationship between certain bacterial species and coral diseases remain largely unknown. Pigment abnormalities are common ...Bacterial diseases affecting corals pose an enormous threat to the health of coral reefs. The relationship between certain bacterial species and coral diseases remain largely unknown. Pigment abnormalities are common in Porites lutea. Here we used Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing to analyze the bacterial communities associated with healthy P. lutea and P. lutea with pigment abnormalities. We observed an increase of alpha diversity of the bacterial community of P. lutea with pigment abnormalities, relative to healthy corals. We then identified changes in the abundance of individual operational taxonomic units(OTUs) between pigmented and healthy corals. We were able to identify eight OTUs associated with pigment abnormalities, which are possibly the causative agents of pigment abnormalities.展开更多
基金The China-Indonesia Maritime Cooperation Fund Project "China-Indonesia Bitung Ecological Station Establishment"the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No.41506180the Public Science and Technology Research Funds Projects of Ocean under contract No.201505009
文摘Bacterial diseases affecting corals pose an enormous threat to the health of coral reefs. The relationship between certain bacterial species and coral diseases remain largely unknown. Pigment abnormalities are common in Porites lutea. Here we used Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing to analyze the bacterial communities associated with healthy P. lutea and P. lutea with pigment abnormalities. We observed an increase of alpha diversity of the bacterial community of P. lutea with pigment abnormalities, relative to healthy corals. We then identified changes in the abundance of individual operational taxonomic units(OTUs) between pigmented and healthy corals. We were able to identify eight OTUs associated with pigment abnormalities, which are possibly the causative agents of pigment abnormalities.
