Building the taxonomic profile of the Riniaie Marwah hot spring of Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir: the first high-throughput sequencing-based metagenome study

Atif Khurshid Wani; Suhail Ahmad; Juliana Heloisa Pinê Américo-Pinheiro; Nazli Tizro; Reena Singh

doi:10.18502/ijm.v15i6.14132

Building the taxonomic profile of the Riniaie Marwah hot spring of Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir: the first high-throughput sequencing-based metagenome study

Iran J Microbiol. 2023 Dec;15(6):723-733. doi: 10.18502/ijm.v15i6.14132.

Authors

Atif Khurshid Wani¹, Suhail Ahmad², Juliana Heloisa Pinê Américo-Pinheiro^{3

4}, Nazli Tizro⁵, Reena Singh¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biotechnology, School of Bioengineering and Biosciences, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, Punjab, India.
² Department of Remote Sensing and GIS, University of Jammu, Jammu, India.
³ Department of Forest Science, Soils and Environment, School of Agronomic Sciences, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Botucatu, Brazil.
⁴ Department of Environmental Sciences, Graduate Program in Environmental Sciences, Brazil University, São Paulo, Brazil.
⁵ Department of the Environment, College of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Rinaie Marwah hot spring Kishtwar (RMHSK) is one of the geothermal springs located at 33°51'51″N 75°32'07″E with an elevation of 2134 meters above sea level in Jammu and Kashmir, India. We aimed to study the microbial diversity of this geothermal spring using metagenomics.

Materials and methods: In the present study, physiochemical parameters including temperature (65-75°C), pH (6. 9-8. 8), hardness (250 ppm), and mineral content was measured along with the microbial diversity using Illumina MiSeq metagenome-based 16s amplicon sequencing (V3-V4). The sequence reads were classified taxonomically into 31 phyla, 71 classes, 152 orders, 256 families, 410 genus, and 665 species. QIIME 2 (Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology), an extensible, powerful, and decentralized analytical tool, was used for taxonomic analysis.

Results: Bacteroidota (32. 57%) was the dominant phylum, Bacteroidia (32. 51%) the dominant class, Bacteroidales (16. 6%) the dominant order, and Lentimicrobiaceae (14. 23%) was the dominant family per the abundance analysis. Shannon (2. 28) and Chao 1 (87. 0) diversity indices support the existence of higher microbial diversity in RMHSK (50717 OTUs).

Conclusion: The microbial diversity of RMHSK is reported for the first time through a metagenomic study. Identification of microorganisms with characteristics that are relevant to industries.

Keywords: High throughput DNA sequencing; Hot spring; Illumina sequencing; Metagenome; Taxonomy.