Study on the Difference of Prokaryotic Flora Structure on the Surface of Micro-nano Coating with Different Antifouling Property

Abstract

Low surface energy composite antifouling coatings prepared from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) have good values for investigation of biofouling-related biological questions on marine biofilm. In order to deeply study the mechanism of antifouling on the surface of CNTs-PDMS coatings, it is necessary to investigate the structure of the microbial flora in the early biofilm on the coating surface. In the present study, the specific aim of this study was to investigate the structure differences of prokaryotic flora in biofilm samples at the early stage of biofouling through 16S rDNA based high-throughput DNA sequencing. By annotating high-throughput DNA sequencing results, this study identified dominant prokaryotic phyla and genera in biofilms of CNTs-PDMS coatings and identified significant differences in microbial composition and its dynamics among different coatings. Though the analysis of the Shannon index, Simpson index, Chao1 index and ACE index, coatings with better antifouling properties and antifouling properties have significant differences in community diversity and abundance, indicating different antifouling properties can affect the type and content of biofilm communities. According to the canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), time and temperature are more related to microbial community distribution, while the diameter and length of nanomaterials are less correlated. Through this study, the differences in microbial composition and content of prokaryotic communities, differences in diversity and abundance of sample communities, the differences between multiple samples and the correlation with important environmental factors were preliminarily analyzed, which laid a decent foundation for further research on the mechanism of anti-fouling on the surface of CNTs and PDMS coatings.