Abstract
The Pinheiros River in São Paulo, Brazil, crosses through the capital city and has its confluence with the River Tiete, which comprises several reservoirs along its course. Although Pinheiros River is considered one of the heaviest polluted rivers in Brazil, little is known about its bacterial composition, their metabolic functions or how these communities are affected by the physicochemical parameters of the river. In this study, we used the 16S rRNA gene Illumina MiSeq sequencing to profile the bacterial community from the water surface at 11 points along the course of the River. Taxonomical composition revealed an abundance of Proteobacteria phyla, followed by Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, with a total of 233 classified bacterial families and 558 known bacterial genera. Among the 35 potentially pathogenic bacteria identified, Arcobacter was the most predominant genus. The disrupted physicochemical parameters detected in this study may possibly contribute to the composition and distribution of the bacterial community in the Pinheiros River. Predictive functional analysis suggests the River is abundant in motility genes, including bacterial chemotaxis and flagellar assembly. These results provide novel and detailed insights into the bacterial communities and putative function of the surface water in the Pinheiros River.
Highlights
Land-use and urban development are the most important drivers responsible for the detrimental alteration of ecosystem structure and function, which can lead to a loss of biodiversity[1,2]
According to the Brazilian Environment National Council (CONAMA) Resolution 357/2005, which categorizes the quality of the water into five classes that range from clean to polluted, the Pinheiros River is categorized as class 4, being very polluted, which means that its water should be used only for navigation and contemplation purposes
We employed the 16S rRNA gene Illumina MiSeq sequencing for the first time to profile the structure of the bacterial community and diversity of 11 surface water samples collected from the Pinheiros River in the city of São Paulo
Summary
Land-use and urban development are the most important drivers responsible for the detrimental alteration of ecosystem structure and function, which can lead to a loss of biodiversity[1,2]. Studies from India indicated that most of its rivers are heavily polluted by discharge of untreated domestic sanitary sewage, direct discharges from industrial waters, and non-point agricultural drainage[7,8]. The Pinheiros River is located in São Paulo state, Brazil This river links the Tiete River, the most important aquatic system of the basin, to the Billings Reservoir, which has 1,560 km[2] of the drainage area and an estimated storage volume of 995 million m3,12. After 1992, with increases in pollution and a lack of adequate wastewater treatment, the waters of the Pinheiros River were prohibited from being reversed into Billings, except in cases of flood control in São Paulo[13,14]. Polluted rivers like the Pinheiros strongly affect the composition of the bacterial community and this may, in turn, alter the functioning of the whole aquatic ecosystem. Several studies in aquatic environments have employed advanced sequencing techniques that enable access to data regarding the functional potential of a microbial community; these measurements typically focus on energy metabolism that involve the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles[20,21,22,23,24]
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