Identification of plastic-associated species in the Mediterranean Sea using DNA metabarcoding with Nanopore MinION
Davidov, K.; Iankelevich-Kounio, E.; Yakovenko, I.; Koucherov, Y.; Rubin-Blum, M.; Oren, M. (2020). Identification of plastic-associated species in the Mediterranean Sea using DNA metabarcoding with Nanopore MinION. NPG Scientific Reports 10(1): 11 pp. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74180-z
In: Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group). Nature Publishing Group: London. ISSN 2045-2322; e-ISSN 2045-2322, more
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| Authors | | Top |
- Davidov, K.
- Iankelevich-Kounio, E.
- Yakovenko, I.
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- Koucherov, Y.
- Rubin-Blum, M.
- Oren, M.
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| Abstract |
Plastic debris in the ocean form a new ecosystem, termed ‘plastisphere’, which hosts a variety of marine organisms. Recent studies implemented DNA metabarcoding to characterize the taxonomic composition of the plastisphere in different areas of the world. In this study, we used a modified metabarcoding approach which was based on longer barcode sequences for the characterization of the plastisphere biota. We compared the microbiome of polyethylene food bags after 1 month at sea to the free-living biome in two proximal but environmentally different locations on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. We targeted the full 1.5 kb-long 16S rRNA gene for bacteria and 0.4–0.8 kb-long regions within the 18S rRNA, ITS, tufA and COI loci for eukaryotes. The taxonomic barcodes were sequenced using Oxford Nanopore Technology with multiplexing on a single MinION flow cell. We identified between 1249 and 2141 species in each of the plastic samples, of which 61 species (34 bacteria and 27 eukaryotes) were categorized as plastic-specific, including species that belong to known hydrocarbon-degrading genera. In addition to a large prokaryotes repertoire, our results, supported by scanning electron microscopy, depict a surprisingly high biodiversity of eukaryotes within the plastisphere with a dominant presence of diatoms as well as other protists, algae and fungi. |
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