Bacterial Community Composition of Sapanca Lake During a Cyanobacterial Bloom

Abstract

Microbial community compositions and functions of freshwater ecosystems vary due to the environmental parameters and water chemistry. Transient bloom events play a crucial role on thecommunity profiles. In this study, a specific focus was set to provide a snapshot of the bacterialcommunity composition in Lake Sapanca, associated with cyanobacterial bloom by high throughput sequencing method. For this purpose, a sample was collected in the shore of Lake Sapancaduring a cyanobacterial bloom, and the bacterial community profile was examined by 16S rRNAamplicon sequencing using the Illumina MiSeq platform. Cyanobacteria represented 94% of the allreads. The bacterial community was re-calculated to evaluate the bacterial diversity in detail byfiltering cyanobacterial sequences. The community was dominated by Proteobacteria (44%) andBacteroidetes (33%) species which are abundant in freshwater ecosystems having an ability to degrade complex organics. Among the classified genera, Flavobacterium and Rheinheimera dominated the bacterial community suggesting a strong link between those species and the cyanobacterial bloom. The experimental work presented here provides one of the first investigations of totalbacterial communities in Lake Sapanca by the high throughput sequencing method. Further workis needed with more sampling points and time series to fully understand the bacterial diversity anddynamics.