Bacterial Diversity in Camalti Saltern, Turkey

Abstract

A combination of culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches was employed to identify the bacterial diversity of camalti solar saltern in Turkey. The bacterial communities of camalti Saltern were analyzed by molecular techniques that included denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of 16S rRNA gene fragments PCR amplified from DNA extracted from the water samples of the saltern and 16S rRNA gene library analysis. A total of 42 isolates were identified at the genus/species level and 17 of them were found to belong to the Bacteria domain. All bacterial isolates were phylogenetically related to Halobacillus, Virgibacillus and Halomonas genus. A total of 50 clones from 16S rRNA gene library were analyzed by ARDRA. 16S rRNA sequence analysisof these clones revealed that most (85%) of the bacterial clones were related to Salinibacter genus members of the Bacteroidetes. The sequences of DGGE bands were related to the uncultured Salinibacter, uncultured halophilic bacterium and Halomonas sp. This work highlights the halophilic bacterial diversity of camalti marine solar saltern.