Abstract:
Bacteria already known to have association with the sponges but their roles within the
sponges still being unclear. Perhaps, the presence of uncultured bacteria within those
sponges have made study by culture-dependent techniques are not suitable. Thus, this
present study was focused mainly on identification of bacteria associated with the
sponges using molecular approaches and investigation of total community of bacteria
within those sponges obtained at Karah Island, Terengganu. Amplification of
extracted DNA using RAPD-PCR and analysis of the 16S rDNA clones have been
carried out to determine the type of bacteria strains in the sponge samples. As a result,
RAPD profile generated the unique polymorphism produced by nine samples of
sponge and a total of twenty colonies were obtained in the construction of 16S rDNA
clones from sample F due to the low number of transformants during the shorter time
of ligation reaction. Analysis of 16S rDNA clones retrieved from sample F that
represented the sponge, Theonella sp. indicated that 100 % of uncultured bacteria.
Three out of twenty colonies which were F2, F6 and F12 have been successfully
extracted of its plasmid and sequenced. Result indicated that uncultured bacteria clone
TK35 and uncultured cyanobacterium clone 106-2-1 with 94-98 % sequence similarity
analyzed after BLAST. Results are in agreement with previous study that showed the
abundances of the bacteria community including the uncultured bacteria within the
sponges.
