Identification of biological potentials of Ghotoursooyi hot spring as the most acidic hot spring of Iran: profiling of bacterial and archaeal communities and adaptation mechanisms

Hot spring extreme ecosystems are important biological resources for identifying the genetic stocks of thermophilic microorganisms and their biological characteristics in terms of tolerance and survival in high temperatures in order to use of their potential in various industries and biotechnology. Although there have been many studies on the microbiome of these biomass in recent years in the world, so far few studies have been done on such indigenous extreme environments of Iran. Iran has a variety of geothermal and volcanic areas which contained numerous unique springs with antimicrobial and antifungal, anti-rheumatism and other muscle aches properties. In this study, the identification of composition of different taxa of the bacterial and archaeal community of Ghotoursooyi hot spring as one of the most acidic chloride springs in the world with the pH of 2.87 was performed by independent cultivation methods using next generation sequencing techniques. For quantitative profiling of the relevant microbial community or so-called metagenomics analysis, 16s rRNA gene libraries were constructed from two functional regions of taxonomic classification V4 to V5 and V3 to V4 with barcoded primers for bacteria and archaea, respectivly. Using bioinformatics analysis, 26 and 11 different taxa belonging to different bacterial and archaeal families and genera were identified with MG-RAST systems, respectivly.