Marine plastisphere_a multi-species biofilm grown on plastic substrate

plastisphere_a multi-species biofilm constructed from phototrophic and heterotrophic organisms such as bacteria, virus, algae, fungi, proto and metazoans, which can be formed on both natural and artificial substrates underwater. In the National Center for Mariculture, Eilat, Israel, periphyton was used as biofilters to remove excessive nutrients from effluents of fish farm. In this study we grew the periphyton-based biofilter on plastic substrates for the period of 5 weeks. 16S rRNA sequencing technique was used to characterize the bacterial community along the 35-day maturation period. The hyper-variable regions of V4-V5 in the 16S rRNA gene were amplified using the primer set 515Fa (5'-GTG YCA GCM GCC GCG GTA A-3') and 926R (5'-CCG YCA ATT YMT TTR AGT TT-3') according to the Earth Microbiome Project suggestion.