Abstract
Hot springs have tremendous significance due to their divulging physiochemical features. In the recent past, metagenomics has emerged as a unique methodology to explore microbiota as well as new biocatalysts possessing advantageous biochemical properties from hot springs. In the present study, metagenomics has been employed for microbial diversity exploration and identification of genes involved in various metabolic pathways among two hot springs, Manikaran and Tatapani, located in Himachal Pradesh, India. Taxonomic analysis of both metagenomes revealed the dominance of the Proteobacteria phylum. Genomic signatures of other bacterial phyla such as Chloroflexi, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Firmicutes were also found in significant abundance in both the metagenomes. The abundance of microorganisms belonging to genera, especially Nitrospira, Thauera, Meiothermus, Thiobacillus, Massilia, and Anaerolinea, was reported to be prevalent in the hot springs. A significant amount of metagenomic data remained taxonomically unclassified, which indeed emphasizes the scientific importance of these thermoaquatic niches. The functional potential analysis of both metagenomes revealed pathways related to carbohydrate metabolism, followed by amino acid metabolism, energy metabolism, genetic information processing, metabolism of cofactors and vitamins, membrane transporter, and signal transduction. Exploration of biomass-modifying biocatalysts enumerated the presence of glycoside hydrolases, glycosyl transferases, polysaccharide lyases, and carbohydrate esterases in the metagenomic data. Together, these findings offer an in-depth understanding of the microbial inhabitants in North-Western Himalayan hot springs and their underlying potential for various biotechnological and industrial applications.
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Data Availability
The high-quality sequence reads have been submitted to the NCBI SRA database under the BioProject ID PRJNA961923.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the Department of Biotechnology, HPU, Shimla, for facilitating the present work. SR acknowledges CSIR-UGC (09/237(0167)/2018-EMR-I) for providing fellowship in the form of Junior and Senior Research Fellow. NS and SPS acknowledge the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India for financial support.
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Conceptualization: Savitri; methodology: Savitri, Sudhir P. Singh; formal analysis and investigation: Shailja Rangra, Nitish Sharma; writing—original draft preparation: Shailja Rangra, Savitri, Nitish Sharma; writing—review and editing: Savitri, Sudhir P. Singh, Prem Lata, Kiran Bala Sharma, Reena Kumari; supervision: Savitri and Sudhir P. Singh. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.
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Rangra, S., Sharma, N., Lata, P. et al. NGS-Based Metagenomics Depicting Taxonomic and Functional Insights into North-Western Himalayan Hot Springs. Indian J Microbiol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-024-01248-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-024-01248-z