Abstract
Marine biofouling, the unwanted colonisation of marine organisms on surfaces immersed in seawater, has huge economic and environmental impact in terms of the performance and maintenance requirements of marine structures. Antifouling coatings, either biocide-based or foul-release, are applied to the surface of immersed mobile and stationary structures to retard this colonisation. In this study, the microorganism (bacteria, microalgae and protozoa) that accumulated on different coatings in a time course experiments were identified using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) of both bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA gene (rDNA) and eukaryotic ribosomal DNA internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) amplicons. The resulting sequences were clustered to Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and assigned taxonomy by comparison to reference databases. Analysis of samples from multiple coatings and time points showed that there were differences in the accumulation of organisms between the various coatings and changes in species composition through time. Strikingly, it was possible to group replicate samples effectively by both coating and time point, indicating that there are fundamental and reproducible differences in the resulting biofilms assemblages. Such approaches will allow us to evaluate the efficacy of various coatings and identify to target with novel formulations.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 464-477 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Biofouling |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 10 May 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- BIOFILMS
- biocidal anti-fouling
- Next generation sequencing
- 16S RIBOSOMAL-RNA
- rDNA sequencing