Research Progress in Area 1 方向 ( 一 ) 課題進展 93 Abstract The coastal marine environment requires increasing monitoring efforts to ensure its sustainable development. Studies on marine microbial communities have advanced rapidly for their functional importance in biogeochemical processes. Using an environmental DNA metabarcoding approach, we studied the influence of factors such as seasonal succession, heavy metal pollution, and aquaculture activities on microbial communities from various coastal ecosystems. Our work on coastal and aquaculture zones further explores the ‘snapshot’ potential of eDNA metabarcoding as a rapid and effective monitoring tool applicable to environmental health predictions and assessments. Research Activities and Progress • Studied heavy metals and microbial communities in contaminated sediments along an urban estuary. • Investigated key pollutants in the coastal waters that affects the health and safety of marine fish. Key Findings • Our work revealed new associations between sedimentary microbial communities and various heavy metals under an estuarine environment condition; • Zn concentration was proposed to be a potent indicator for heavy metal pollution-associated microbial community compositional shifts under urbanized estuarine conditions. Research Output Publications 2 Trained personnel 14 Environmental DNA Metabarcoding for the Early Warning of Algal Bloom and Diagnosis of Fish Mortality Events Prof. Jinping Cheng The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Fig 1. RDA ordination plots of the composition and abundances of dominant bacterial from sediment samples in relation to heavy metals and their Igeo indices. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8:741912.
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