Iron bacterial phylogeny and their execution towards iron availability in Equatorial Indian Ocean and coastal Arabian...

Based on distinct colony morphology, color, size, shape and certain other traits, 92 bacterial isolates were investigated to understand their managerial ability on iron from the Arabian Sea and Equatorial Indian Ocean samples. The ARDRA (amplified rDNA restriction analysis) applied to eliminate the duplication of the bacterial strains, resulted 39 different banding patterns. The 16S rRNA gene sequencing data indicate the dominancy of three phylogenetic groups, alpha-Proteobacteria (10.25%), gamma-Proteobacteria (35.89%) and Bacilli (53.84%) in these waters. Marinobacter and Bacillus were the only common genera from both of the regions. Pseudoalteromonas, Halomonas, Rheinheimera, Staphylococcus and Idiomarina were some of the other genera obtained from the Arabian Sea. Erythrobacter, Roseovarius, Sagittula and Nitratireductor were found mostly in Equatorial Indian Ocean. In addition, 16S rRNA gene sequence data of some of our iron bacterial strains belong to novel species and one isolate ASS2A could form a new genus. Close to 23% of the isolates were able to produce high affinity sets of ligands like siderophores to mediate iron transport into the cell. The current study indicated that the Equatorial Indian Ocean species were well adapted to oxidize iron as an electron acceptor and the Arabian Sea species preferably go through siderophore production.