Diversity of archaea in the sediments from different areas of the Bohai Sea

Methanogens play an important role in the carbon cycle of coastal sediments. In this study, sea water enrichment cultures with acetate as the substrate were employed to enrich methanogens using sediments of the Bohai Sea. The methane production was used to estimate potential methane productivity and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis was used to analyze the diversity of microbial communities simultaneously. Our results revealed that changes in the bacterial and the methanogens community structures in sediments from different areas of the Bohai Sea were found. The dominant methanogens were Methanobacterium and Methanolobus in sediments of the Bohai Sea, and Desulfovibrio and Thiobacillus were the dominant bacteria. Different areas of the Bohai Sea obviously varied on methane production, which shows that the methane emission is higher in the coastal area. Bohai Sea has great potential for methane productivity and acetic acid conversion rate(46.46%), and the estimation of potential methane production is 1.74 Gt per year