Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Metagenomic Sequencing Identifies Highly Diverse Assemblages Of Dinoflagellate Cysts In Sediments From Ships' Ballast Tanks, Lixia Shang, Zhangxi Hu, Yunyan Deng, Yuyang Liu, Xinyu Zhai, Zhaoyang Chai, Xiaohan Liu, Zifeng Zhan, Fred C. Dobbs, Ying Zhong Tang

OES Faculty Publications

Ships' ballast tanks have long been known as vectors for the introduction of organisms. We applied next-generation sequencing to detect dinoflagellates (mainly as cysts) in 32 ballast tank sediments collected during 2001-2003 from ships entering the Great Lakes or Chesapeake Bay and subsequently archived. Seventy-three dinoflagellates were fully identified to species level by this metagenomic approach and single-cell polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based sequencing, including 19 toxic species, 36 harmful algal bloom (HAB) forming species, 22 previously unreported as producing cysts, and 55 reported from ballast tank sediments for the first time (including 13 freshwater species), plus 545 operational taxonomic units …