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Influence of Physicochemical Factors on Bacterial Communities Along the Lower Mekong River Assessed by Illumina Next-Generation Sequencing

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Abstract

The relationship between land use and microbial community structure at seven sites along the Lower Mekong River, between Thailand and the Loa People’s Democratic Republic, was investigated using Illumina next-generation sequencing of the V5–V6 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene. In total, 14,470 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were observed. Community composition was significantly different between sampling years. Moraxellaceae and Comamonadaceae were the predominant bacterial families in upstream sites, which included agricultural and urban areas in the Loei and Nong Khai provinces of Thailand. Members of the family Comamonadaceae were prevalent in agricultural and urban sites in Bueng Kan Province, while Moraxellaceae and Burkholderiaceae were the major families in a site downstream of an urban area in the Nakhon Phanom Province of Thailand. The bacterial community observed from a forested area of Patam National Park in Thailand showed greatest diversity, and several major bacterial families including Comamonadaceae, Moraxellaceae, and Pseudomonadaceae were more dominant than other sites. The diversity of fecal indicator bacteria, determined by ERIC-PCR DNA fingerprinting, indicated the presence of 29 strains of Escherichia coli and 21 strains of Enterococcus, while TP-RAPD patterns represented six species of Enterococcus. Results of this study indicated that although the difference in the distribution of bacterial phyla and families was found among sampling sites, the bacterial community composition, based on the presence of OTUs, continuously retained its signature across approximately 758 km along the Lower Mekong River, regardless of the type of land use. Water parameters, including temperature, turbidity, DO, and air temperature, also differentially affected the abundance of bacterial families along the Mekong River.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported, in part, by the Silpakorn University Research and Development Institute under Grant SURDI 59/01/42 (to NP) and by the University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station (to MJS). Sequence processing and analyses were performed using the resource of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BioTechnology Institute, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Christopher Staley, Thomas Kaiser & Michael J. Sadowsky

  2. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Silpakorn University, Nakhon Pathom, 73000, Thailand

    Neelawan Pongsilp

  3. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Kasetsart University, Nakhon Pathom, 73140, Thailand

    Pongrawee Nimnoi

  4. Department of Soil, Water and Climate, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Michael J. Sadowsky

  5. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Michael J. Sadowsky

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  1. Christopher Staley
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Correspondence to Michael J. Sadowsky.

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Staley, C., Pongsilp, N., Nimnoi, P. et al. Influence of Physicochemical Factors on Bacterial Communities Along the Lower Mekong River Assessed by Illumina Next-Generation Sequencing. Water Air Soil Pollut 229, 321 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-018-3973-0

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