Insight into the microbial community structure of a Norwegian deep-water coral reef environment

Deep-water coral reefs support rich biological communities below the photic zone of fjords and continental shelves around the world. In this environment, life is enclosed within cold permanent darkness, in stark contrast to life in tropical coral reefs. We collected samples of water, sediment and a Desmacidon sp. sponge from a deep-water coral reef off the coast of Norway, and characterised bacterial communities with focus on primary producers in the dark. Following DNA extraction, PCR amplification and 16S rRNA gene library sequencing, bioinformatic analyses demonstrated significant differences between bacterial communities associated with the three samples. The finding that 50% of the clones showed