Bacterial community profiling of mangrove sediments employing metagenomic methods

Bacterial communities are significant actors in the functioning and maintenance of mangrove ecosystem. A thorough exploration of the microbial diversity can divulge information about their roles in nutrient recycling and other ecological processes. This aim of this work is to study the bacterial community composition of mangrove sediments collected from Mangalavanam, a conserved mangrove ecosystem located in Kochi, Kerala, India, known as the “Green lungs of Kochi”. An in depth, high throughput identification of the bacterial communities in the sediments was conducted based on Illumina sequencing by targeting the V3 regions of 16S rRNA gene.