Bacterial community structure and predicted alginate metabolic pathway in an alginate-degrading bacterial consortium

• Alginate-degrading bacterial consortium was obtained from sand on the beach.
• This consortium was mainly composed of two dominant genera.
• This consortium possessed all the candidate genes involved in the alginate metabolic pathway.

Methane fermentation is one of the effective approaches for utilization of brown algae; however, this process is limited by the microbial capability to degrade alginate, a main polysaccharide found in these algae. Despite its potential, little is known about anaerobic microbial degradation of alginate. Here we constructed a bacterial consortium able to anaerobically degrade alginate. Taxonomic classification of 16S rRNA gene, based on high-throughput sequencing data, revealed that this consortium included two dominant strains, designated HUA-1 and HUA-2; these strains were related to Clostridiaceae bacterium SK082 (99%) and Dysgonomonas capnocytophagoides (95%), respectively. Alginate lyase activity and metagenomic analyses, based on high-throughput sequencing data, revealed that this bacterial consortium possessed putative genes related to a predicted alginate metabolic pathway. However, HUA-1 and 2 did not grow on agar medium with alginate by using roll-tube method, suggesting the existence of bacterial interactions like symbiosis for anaerobic alginate degradation.