Regional Studies in Marine Science 34 (2020) 101051

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Regional Studies in Marine Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rsma

Microbial diversity and related secondary metabolite gene assortment

at an estuarine mangrove ecosystem
Sohan Sengupta a ,1 , Arnab Pramanik a,b ,1 , Sudip Nag a , Debojyoti Roy a ,
∗ ∗∗
Anish Bhattacharyya a , Pijush Basak b , , Maitree Bhattacharyya a,b ,
a
Department of Biochemistry, University of Calcutta, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, West Bengal, India
b
Jagadis Bose National Science Talent Search, 1300, Rajdanga Main Road, Kolkata 700107, India

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: Mangrove ecosystems are a major biodiversity hotspot of the world. The world heritage site Sun-
Received 20 December 2018 darbans is an archipelago with an estuarine mangrove ecosystem. It is assumed that each individual
Received in revised form 3 January 2020 Island of the Sundarbans possess a unique biodiversity due to the seasonal variation of physicochemical
Accepted 3 January 2020
parameters, along with tidal dynamics of Bay of Bengal. This study unfolds a time series analysis
Available online 9 January 2020
of microbial diversity using high-resolution 16S rRNA tag pyrosequencing. Eight soil samples were
Keywords: collected over three years at a pristine temperate estuarine site located at the sea mangrove interface
16S rRNA at the island of Kalash. Apart from the predominant phyla such as Proteobacteria [31.6%], Chloroflexi
Microbial diversity [10.7%], Firmicutes [7%] Bacteroidetes [7%] and Actinobacteria [1.2%], soil from Kalash also contained
Metagenomics a significant amount of rare phyla NC10 and WS3 categorized as microbial dark matter (MDM).
Polyketide synthase Variation in bacterial community composition occurs mainly as a result of the seasonal changes
Mangrove and consequent alterations of physicochemical parameters leading to microbial adaptations. Further
Sundarbans soil sediment
we performed functional metagenomics to estimate the possibility of the synthesis of new natural
compounds by diverse Polyketide Synthase (PKS). The data indicated diverse microbial origins of keto
synthase sequences from polyketide synthase genes. Presence of this unique keto synthases confirmed
the existence of a potential microbiome which may be capable of producing novel small molecules.
This is the pioneering report to correlate the microbial community structure of Sundarbans with their
potential to produce essential bioactive compounds.
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction biodiversity, being the primary drivers of a community struc-

Coastal mangroves are vulnerable from the perspective of
resiliency to the different interactive impacts like sea level rise,
changing ocean currents, increased storminess, and increased
temperature (Ward et al., 2016). Anthropogenic intervention is
also an important issue particularly for the Sundarbans man-
grove (Roy et al., 2018). Rapid changes to the status of such
ecosystems is the consequence of physical, geological, biological
and environmental threats related to climate change. A case of
drastic change in bacterial community structure was observed in
Cies Island of NW coast of Spain within a time period of only
three years as a result of anthropogenic effect (Acosta-González
et al., 2013). Microorganisms numerically dominate terrestrial
∗ Corresponding author.
∗∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Biochemistry, University of
Calcutta, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, West Bengal, India.
E-mail addresses: basakpijush@gmail.com (P. Basak), bmaitree@gmail.com
(M. Bhattacharyya).
1 Both authors contributed equally to this work.
ture and play crucial role in maintaining the biogeochemical
cycle. To protect any sensitive ecosystem, a comprehensive study
of the microbiota is important since they respond very fast to
any kind of environmental alteration. They are also responsi-
ble for the mineralization of soil organic matter (SOM) (Fageria,
2012). The crucial components of this study involve evaluation
of the primary physicochemical and environmental parameters
of the mangrove ecosystem along with seasonal variation. Soil
respiration is enhanced under climate warming and thus pro-
vides feedback on global temperature increase (Cox et al., 2000;
Davidson and Janssens, 2006) which may induce changes in the
community composition of soil microorganisms (Bardgett et al.,
2008).
However, to date, a comprehensive description of the micro-
bial community structure in the mangrove ecosystem of Sundar-
bans is not available. Most studies on Sundarbans estuary are
focused on specific microbial activities such as the utilization of
specific substrates, extracellular enzyme production, synthesis of
antibiotics (Ghosh et al., 2015), nutritional dynamics or miner-
alization (Manna et al., 2010; Kuffner et al., 2012a). There are

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsma.2020.101051
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