Event Abstract Back to Event Unveiling the microbial community associated with the marine seaweed Fucus spiralis Joana Ribeiro1, Susete G. Pinteus1, Celso Alves1, Joana Silva1 and Rui P. Pedrosa1* 1 MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, ESTM, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal The marine environment offers an immense biodiversity still mostly unexplored. Within, marine organisms stablish close associations as strategy to survive and prosper, creating complex networks where seaweeds play an important role. As photosynthetic organisms, they are in the base of the food chain providing food and shelter for a wide number of organisms such as sea urchins, sea snails, crustaceans and young fish, and by other side, they contribute to the establishment of specific microbiological communities [1,2]. These symbiotic relationships provide a variety of advantages to the host such as vitamins and nitrogen fixation, and studies suggest that these microbiological communities are also involved in the defence against predators through the production of bioactive secondary metabolites. On the other hand, seaweeds provide the surfaces for microbial colonization and a source of nutrients [2,3]. Within this framework, in this work, bacteria associated with Fucus spiralis (Brown seaweed) collected in Peniche coast, were selected according to their phenotype and isolated by the streak technique. The identification was carried out by the RNA ribossomal 16s gene amplification through PCR techniques using the 27F and 1392R primers, which resulted in the identification of 63 bacteria. The genera Pseudoalteromonas sp, Bacillus sp., Vibrio sp., Halomonas sp., Idiomarina sp., and Staphylococcus sp. were verified, however Idiomarina sp. was the most abundant genus corresponding to 36% of the total isolates. Some of these genera are reported to have biotechnological relevance as producers of bioactive metabolites [4-7]. The exploration of the microbiological biodiversity associated with the seaweed Fucus spiralis resulted in the discovery of new possible sources of bioactive compounds. Acknowledgements Authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through Strategic Project UID/MAR/04292/2013 granted to MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, through Red2Discovery Project (PTDC/MAR-BIO/6149/2014), co-financed by COMPETE (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016791), and through Oncologia de Precisão: Terapias e Tecnologias Inovadoras project (POINT4PAC) (SAICTPAC/0019/2015 - LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-016405).