Bacterial community analysis in three types of the fermented seafood, jeotgal, produced in South Korea

Jeotgal is a traditional Korean seafood fermented by indigenous microbes. The bacterial community in five myeolchi-jeot (Engraulis japonica), five meongge-jeot (Halocynthia roretzi), and six saeu-jeot (Acetes japonicas) produced in South Korea was analyzed by barcoded pyrosequencing targeting the V1/V2 hyper-variable regions of the 16S rRNA gene. All samples were dominated by the phyla Firmicutes, which represented 67.7% (SD = 27.2%) of the population. Tetragenococcus halophilus and Tetragenococcus muriaticus were the predominant species in myeolchi-jeot. The LABs, Lactobacillus sakei, Lactobacillus curvatus, and Weissella koreensis were the predominant species in meongge-jeot. In myeolchi-jeot and meongge-jeot, the bacterial communities within samples were consistent in their predominance, however each of saeu-jeot samples had inter-individual variety in the bacterial community leading to the difficulties of standardization for the commercial production of saeu-jeot. The results of this study will conclusively help to expand our basic knowledge of jeotgal and the related microorganisms involved in food fermentation.