Bacterial diversity in sediments of core MD05-2902 from the Xisha Trough,the South China Sea

A sediment core MD05-2902 was collected from the deep-sea basin of the Xisha Trough. The vertical distribution and diversity of bacteria in the core was investigated through ten sub-sampling with an interval of 1 m using bacterial 16 S rRNA gene as a phylogenetic bio-marker. Eighteen phylogenetic groups were identified from 16 S rRNA gene clone libraries. The dominant bacterial groups were JS1, Planctomycetes and Chloroflexi, which accounted for 30.6%, 16.6%, and 15.6% of bacterial clones in the libraries, respectively. In order to reveal the relationship between biotic and abiotic data, a nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis was performed. The result revealed that the δ15N, δ13C, total organic carbon and total organic nitrogen possibly influenced the bacterial community structure. This study expanded our knowledge of the biogeochemical cycling in the Xisha Trough sediment.