Seasonal dynamics of marine dinoflagellates community in the Korean coastal waters using metagenomics analysis (NGS, Next Generation Sequencing)

In this research, we suggest the potential of metagenomics technology to provide accurate, rapid, and cost efficient observations of the marine environment. The usage of such approaches in next generation sequencing will help to achieve the goals of future monitoring of marine plankton community with advanced technique. Metagenomics methods can provide faster results of monitoring, easier and more reliable taxonomic identification, as well as quicker and better assessment of the biological environments of marine waters. Data from metagenomics methods has high potential to integrating or replacing into existing monitoring methods. In this study, Metagenomics was used to obtain for snapshots of seasonal diversity and community structure of marine dinoflagellates in four sites of the Korean coastal water. These results suggest that different geographical position of four sampling stations contribute to the dynamic structure of the plankton community in Korean coastal waters. The results presented here was useful for comparative analyses with other plankton communities and also possible to detect marine dinoflagellates which hardly identified or detected by a microscopic analysis. So, when using metagenomic method for analysis marine dinoflagellates community, it is possible to detect toxic or harmful species in very early stages. Applying metagenomics method in monitoring marine plankton community is considered a new technology that goes beyond the limits of current monitoring methods.