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The bacterial diversity in sediments from the northern Bering Sea was investigated by culture-independent approaches. Community fingerprint analysis by polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) revealed that sediment at two deep stations (DBSE and DBS1, >400 m in depth) harbored a bacterial community distinct from the sediments collected at shallow stations (<150 m in depth) on the continental shelf. Three 16S rRNA gene clone libraries for sediments collected from shallow to deep water stations (NEC5, DBSE and DBS1, respectively) were established. Sediment collected at the deepest station DBS1 showed the highest diversity index value. Sequences fell into 19 major lineages of the domain Bacteria: Alpha-, Beta-, Gamma-, Delta- and Epsilonproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes, Nitrospirae, Verrucomicrobia, Chloroflexi, Chlorobi, Spirochaetes, Cyanobacteria (or chloroplasts), and candidate divisions OP8, TM6, and WS3. A small fraction of retrieved sequences (1.8%) did not fall into any taxonomic division. Deltaproteobacteria (30%) was the dominant phylum in the three libraries, followed by Gammaproteobacteria (21%) and Acidobacteria (16%). The percentages of cloned sequences with the highest similarity to reported sequences below 97 and 93% were 48.1 and 24.3%, respectively. A large number of phylotypes affiliated with bacteria that play important roles in the carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen cycles suggest an important link of bacteria to the matter cycling in these subarctic sediments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]