Metagenomic analysis of bacterial and archaeal assemblages in the soil-mousse surrounding a geothermal spring
Sonu Bhatia,
Navneet Batra,
Ashish Pathak,
Amit Joshi,
Leila Souza,
Paulo Almeida,
Ashvini Chauhan
Affiliations
Sonu Bhatia
Department of Biotechnology, GGDSD College, Sector 32-C, Chandigarh, India
Navneet Batra
Department of Biotechnology, GGDSD College, Sector 32-C, Chandigarh, India
Ashish Pathak
School of the Environment, Environmental Biotechnology and Genomics Lab, 1515 S. MLK Blvd., Suite 305B, Building FSHSRC, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA
Amit Joshi
Department of Biotechnology, SGGS College, Sector 26, Chandigarh, India
Leila Souza
Laboratory of Biotechnology and Ecology of Microorganisms, Department of Biointeraction, Federal University of Bahia, Bahia, Brazil
Paulo Almeida
Laboratory of Biotechnology and Ecology of Microorganisms, Department of Biointeraction, Federal University of Bahia, Bahia, Brazil
Ashvini Chauhan
School of the Environment, Environmental Biotechnology and Genomics Lab, 1515 S. MLK Blvd., Suite 305B, Building FSHSRC, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA
The soil-mousse surrounding a geothermal spring was analyzed for bacterial and archaeal diversity using 16S rRNA gene amplicon metagenomic sequencing which revealed the presence of 18 bacterial phyla distributed across 109 families and 219 genera. Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and the Deinococcus-Thermus group were the predominant bacterial assemblages with Crenarchaeota and Thaumarchaeota as the main archaeal assemblages in this largely understudied geothermal habitat. Several metagenome sequences remained taxonomically unassigned suggesting the presence of a repertoire of hitherto undescribed microbes in this geothermal soil-mousse econiche.
