Irfan Mustafa, Ryuta Kawauchi, Shigeru Morimura
This study aimed to determine the composition of H2S-oxidizing bacteria from Midorikawa mudflat using a culture-independent approach based on the sulfide quinone reductase (sqr) gene. This gene is involved in the initial step of H2S oxidation resulting in elemental sulfur. Total DNA was extracted from the mudflat sediment. A partial sequence of sqr was amplified by PCR and a clone library was established. The results showed that the community of H2S oxidizers was dominated by Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria. Sequence similarity of sqr to the isolated reference strains from GenBank database were 76-88%. However, a significant number of the clones were affiliated with uncultured bacteria. This indicated that diverse bacteria exist in Midorikawa mudflat to oxidize the released H2S, and most of them were previously undiscovered. © 2018 Author(s).
Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Brawijaya University, Malang, East Java, 65145, Indonesia; Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
