Assessment of sediment-associated bacterial community and predicted functions to decipher the impact of heavy metals.

To understand the influence of chemical pollutants such as heavy metal contamination on sediment-associated bacterial community, marine sediments were sampled from the Southern coastal region of India. The content of heavy metals was analyzed using Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer. Bacterial community composition of investigated samples was assessed using high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) of hypervariable V3-V4 region of 16S rRNA gene using standard protocol for 16S metagenomic sequencing.