Archaeal diversity in tidal flat sediment as revealed by 16S rDNA analysis

During the past ten years, Archaea have been recognized as a widespread and significant component of marine picoplankton assemblages. More recently, the presence of novel archaeal phylogenetic lineages has been discovered in coastal marine environments, freshwater lakes, polar seas, and deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Therefore, we conducted an investigation into the archaeal community existing in tidal flat sediment collected from Ganghwa Island, Korea. Phylogenetic analysis of archaeal 16S rDNA amplified directly from tidal flat sediment DNA revealed the presence of two major lineages, belonging to the Crenarchaeota (53.9%) and Euryarchaeota (46.1%) phyla. A total of 102 clones were then sequenced and analyzed by comprehensive phylogenetic analysis. The sequences determined in our samples were found to be closely related to the sequences of clones which had been previously obtained from a variety of marine environments. Archaeal clones exhibited higher similarities (83.25-100%) to sequences from other environments in the public database than did those (75.22-98.46%) of previously reported bacterial clones obtained from tidal flat sediment. The results of our study suggest that the archaeal community in tidal flat sediment is remarkably diverse.