[Objective] This study aimed to investigate the abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and ammonia-oxidizing archaea in Pearl River Estuary sediment.[Method] Firstly,the amoA gene library was constructed;then based on that,the content and diversity of amoA genes of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and ammonia-oxidizing archaea in Pearl River Estuary sediment were detected by using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction（Q-PCR）.[Result] The results of Q-PCR presented that ammonia-oxidizing archaea（AOA） were more abundant than ammonia-oxidizing bacteria（AOB） in the top of sediment cores,with ratios of AOA to AOB of 22 and 9 at the two sites.It suggested that ammonia-oxidizing archaea may play more important roles than ammonia-oxidizing bacteria in the process of ammonia oxidation in the Pearl River Estuary sediment.The phylogenetic tree based on amoA gene sequences revealed that the amoA sequences of both AOA and AOB shared high similarity with the clones from uncultured environment.In the top sediment layer at site Q7,AOB amoA-like gene sequences were dominated by Nitrosomonas-like sequence types,which could be classified into five groups（clusters A,B,C,D and E）.Cluster A accounted for 72.1% of the library.In the top sediment layer,the AOA amoA gene fell into two groups ＂water column/sediment＂ cluster（52.2%） and ＂soil/sediment＂ cluster（47.8%）.But in the bottom sediment layer of Q7,most of the AOA amoA sequences（93.3%） fell into ＂soil/sediment＂ cluster,and a little part（6.7%） fell into the ＂water/sediment＂ cluster.In addition,the total amount of amoA genes in the bottom sediment was higher than that in top sediment.[Conclusion] This study helps to realize the cycle of nitrogen in Pearl River Estuary Region,and thus to provide theoretical support for the treatment of nitrogen eutrophication.
