Abstract
Bacterial and archaeal diversity of two alkaline Indian hot springs, Jakrem (Meghalaya) and Yumthang (Sikkim), were studied. Thirteen major bacterial phyla were identified of which Firmicutes, Chloroflexi and Thermi were dominant in Jakrem and Proteobacteria in Yumthang. The dominant genera were Clostridium, Chloroflexus and Meiothermus at Jakrem (water temperature 46 °C, pH 9) and Thiobacillus, Sulfuritalea at Yumthang (water temperature 39 °C, pH 8) hot springs. The four Euryarchaeota taxa that were observed in both the hot springs were Methanoculleus, Methanosaeta, Methanosarcina and Methanocorposculum. Elstera litoralis, Thiovirga sp., Turneriella sp. were observed for the first time in association with hot springs along with Tepidibacter sp., Ignavibacterium sp., Teribacillus sp. and Dechloromonas sp. Individual bacterial phyla were found to be specifically correlated with certain physico-chemical factors such as temperature, dissolved SiO2, elemental S, total sulphide, calcium concentrations in hot spring water. Bacterial reads involved in sulfur cycle were identified in both16S rRNA gene library and sulfur metabolism may play key physiological functions in this hot spring. Members within Desulfobacterales and Thermodesulfovibrionaceae were identified and hypothesized their role in regulating sulfur cycle. The presence of many taxonomically unsolved sequences in the 16S rRNA gene tag datasets from these hot springs could be a sign of novel microbe richness in these less known hot water bodies of Northeastern India.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13568-016-0284-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The Himalayas represent a unique area of geothermal system associated with continent- continent colliding zone and the Himalayan geothermal belt (HGB) extends from the north-western part to the north-eastern part of India over a length of 1500 sq km (Chauhan 2015)
The aqueous concentrations of cations such as sodium, calcium and potassium were highest in Jakrem hot spring, where as total sulphide concentration was high in Yumthang hot spring
The correlation analysis showed that few dominant bacterial phyla were positively correlated with particular geochemical factor such as the Firmicutes with temperature, Ca, Cl, dissolved SiO2; Thermi and Chloroflexi with pH, Si and elemental S; Proteobacteria correlates with total sulphide (Additional file 1: Table S3; Fig. 5)
Summary
The Himalayas represent a unique area of geothermal system associated with continent- continent colliding zone and the Himalayan geothermal belt (HGB) extends from the north-western part to the north-eastern part of India over a length of 1500 sq km (Chauhan 2015). Compared to many studies on hot springs at lower elevations such as Yellowstone National Park (Kan et al 2011), Kamchatka in Russia (Reigstad et al 2010), Iceland (Mirete et al 2011) Indonesia (Aditiawati et al 2009), Tunisia (Sayeh et al 2010) and north-eastern Australia (Weidler et al 2007), very little is known about the microbial diversity of high elevation Himalayan hot springs. A few studies have been performed on the microbial ecology of hot springs from North-eastern India (Rakshak et al 2013; Sherpa et al 2013) and still it is assumed that comprehensive understanding on the microbial community structure in these hot springs are less known
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