Bacterial diversity in wild tropical marine sponges from waters off Terengganu, southwestern South China Sea

This dataset consists of raw sequencing data (fasta) and analysed relative abundance data (histograms of the dominant 10 species in respective taxonomic ranks ). This project shows the first bacterial diversity profiling of high-microbial-abundance wild tropical marine sponges of southern South China Sea, which are Aaptos aaptos and Xestospongia muta from Bidong and Redang islands, Malaysia. Marine sponges are acknowledged as a bacterial hotspot and resource of novel natural products or genetic material. However, sponge-associated bacteria are difficult to be cultivated and the production of their desirable metabolites are inadequate in terms of rate and quantity, yet bioinformatics and metagenomics tools are progressing. Therefore, the diversity profiling of bacterial communities in marine sponges reveals the approximate gene pool for the gene mining or isolation of bacteria that are potentially and commercially beneficial in manufacturing industry, medicine, or agriculture. The bacterial community data exploited from this project is useful for critical comparison through additional or integrated bioinformatics processing with other marine sponge-associated bacterial community profile data. The community data of this project also unveils some general physiological function of the sponge-associated bacterial assemblage in its local environment. In the data provided, the sponge-associated bacterial communities in A. aaptos of Pulau Bidong, A. aaptos of Pulau Redang, and X. muta of Pulau Bidong have been denoted by A, B, and M, respectively.本数据集包含原始测序数据（fasta格式）与经分析得到的相对丰度数据（对应各分类阶元下优势前10物种的丰度直方图）。本项目首次针对南海南部高微生物丰度的野生热带海洋海绵开展细菌多样性谱分析，受试海绵为采自马来西亚比东岛与热浪岛的Aaptos aaptos及Xestospongia muta。海洋海绵被公认为细菌热点生境，同时也是新型天然产物与遗传物质的重要资源库。然而，海绵共生细菌难以体外培养，其目标代谢产物的产率与产量均难以满足实际需求；与此同时，生物信息学与宏基因组学工具正不断发展完善。因此，对海洋海绵内细菌群落的多样性谱分析，可为挖掘或分离具备潜在商业价值的细菌提供近似基因库参考，这类细菌可应用于制造业、医药及农业领域。本项目获取的细菌群落数据，可通过额外或整合的生物信息学处理，与其他海洋海绵共生细菌群落谱数据开展严谨的比对分析。本项目的群落数据还揭示了当地环境中海绵共生细菌群落的部分通用生理功能。在本次提供的数据中，比东岛的A. aaptos、热浪岛的A. aaptos以及比东岛的X. muta对应的海绵共生细菌群落，分别以A、B、M标识。