Exploring the microbial community structure in the Southeast Arabian Sea

The current study assessed the surface sediment bacterial community structure in the Southeast Arabian Sea using high-throughput illumina based sequencing approach. The role of critical environmental variables on the distribution of bacterial community structure in the Arabian Sea was also assessed The Arabian Sea is one of the most biologically productive and dynamic marine ecosystem. This system is deeply influenced by changing environmental conditions, modulated seasonally by physical forces such as upwelling, winter cooling and monsoonal winds as well as monsoon induced nutrient influx from the river and terrestrial source. The increased biological production in the Arabian Sea provides a huge amount of sinking particulate organic matter in the system and that contribute significantly to the maintenance of an extended deep oxygen minimum zone. The physicochemical heterogeneity of sediments makes it a suitable environment for the diverse taxon of microbes. Sediments act as a final storage ground for organic inputs from water column processes or from anthropogenic sources. Regeneration of nutrients from the bottom sediments, especially limiting nutrients, is critical to sustain a good level of productivity in the upper water column. The microbial community with in the sediment determine the turnover of organic matter in deep-sea sediments. The microbial diversity and abundance are known to be strongly driven by the soil's physico chemical conditions such as salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and nutrient concentration. The resident bacteria are finely tuned to adapt to these environmental conditions and so their abundance and community composition are of great importance in understanding the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients in these soils. Although the diversity of sediment microorganisms has been reported from various marine systems using NGS technology, such studies are lacking from the Arabian Sea.