Diversity of planktonic n-alkane degrading marine microbial communities in seawater samples of Menai Straits (Wales, UK)

To investigate the potential of the native marine communities from Menai Straits to grow on long-chain n-alkanes as the sole carbon and energy source we set up enrichments with n-octadecane using the surface seawater samples of Menai Straits as an inoculum with varying concentrations of nitrogen source and elevated salinity. Changes in the composition and diversity of bacterial communities in the enrichments were examined by SSU rRNA gene amplicon sequencing using the Illumina MiSeq platform.