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.