Fungal community analysis in seawater of the Mariana Trench as estimated by Illumina HiSeq†
Zhi-Peng Wang,Zeng-Zhi Liu,Yi-Lin Wang,Wang-Hua Bi,Lu Liu,Hai-Ying Wang,Yuan Zheng,Lin-Lin Zhang,Shu-Gang Hu,Shan-Shan Xu,Peng Zhang
RSC Advances Pub Date : 02/28/2019 00:00:00 , DOI:10.1039/C8RA10142F
Abstract

This study assessed the diversity and distribution of fungal communities in thirteen marine seawater samples from four sites (L1, L3, L4 and L7) of the Mariana Trench, with a depth range of 1000–4000 meters, using Illumine Hiseq sequencing with fungal-specific primers targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the ribosomal rRNA gene. Sedimentary fungal communities showed high diversity with 209 880 reads belonging to 91 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Of these OTUs, 45 belonged to the Ascomycota, 37 to Basidiomycota, 3 to Chytridiomycota, 1 to Glomeromycota, 1 to Cryptomycota, and 4 to unknown fungi. The major fungal orders included Saccharomycetales and Sporidiobolales. The commonly found fungal genera were Candida, Malassezia and Cryptococcus. These results suggest the existence of diverse fungal communities in the Mariana Trench marine seawater, which can be considered as a useful community model for further ecological and evolutionary study of fungi in the trench.

Graphical abstract: Fungal community analysis in seawater of the Mariana Trench as estimated by Illumina HiSeq