Mr Muhammad Iqram1, Dr Nur Haedar1, Dr Ambeng Ambeng1, Mrs. Yusriana Yusriana2
1Biology Department, Hasanuddin University, Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan Km. 10, Indonesia, 2Archeology Department, Hasanuddin University, Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan Km. 10, Indonesia
Maros-Pangkep karst region is a natural landscape located inside the UNESCO Global Geopark, extending across two regencies in South Sulawesi. There are at least 135 prehistoric caves, of which about 78 of them still have traces of relics in the form of paintings on rocks. One thing that has made this region renown is the presence of world’s oldest ancient rock painting, ca 40,000 years, in an ancient cave. Unfortunately, many paintings have been experiencing degradation marked with colour changes and exfoliation, which are thought to be due to the colonization of bacterial or other microorganism biofilms. Thus, this study aims at the assessment of bacterial diversity on biofilm covering ancient paintings in three different caves in the region. The study was performed using Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT), providing the long reads sequencing covering the full-length sequence of 16S rRNA gene (V1-V9 regions). The results showed that the most dominant taxa of biofilm on the rock art in every cave were from Firmicutes about 95% and 82% in Leang (cave) Jing and Leang Parewe. Meanwhile, in Leang Bulu Sipong, Betaproteobacteria (30%) and Firmicutes (44%) were dominating. Despite of the result on microbial diversity on the rock paintings, it is still necessary to do further study on how the mechanism of degradation performed by the bacteria. This will support the effort of local authority to conserve local heritage aged thousand years.
Biography:
Biographies to come