Building the taxonomic profile of the Riniaie Marwah hot spring of Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir: the first high-throughput sequencing-based metagenome study

Rinaie Marwah hot spring Kishtwar (RMHSK) is one of the geothermal springs located at 33°51′51′′N 75°32′07′′E with an elevation of 2134 meters above sea level in Jammu and Kashmir, India. We aimed to study the microbial diversity of this geothermal spring using metagenomics.

In the present study, physiochemical parameters including temperature (65-75oC), pH (6. 9-8. 8), hardness (250 ppm), and mineral content was measured along with the microbial diversity using Illumina MiSeq metage- nome-based 16s amplicon sequencing (V3-V4). The sequence reads were classified taxonomically into 31 phyla, 71 classes, 152 orders, 256 families, 410 genus, and 665 species. QIIME 2 (Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology), an extensible, powerful, and decentralized analytical tool, was used for taxonomic analysis.

Bacteroidota (32. 57%) was the dominant phylum, Bacteroidia (32. 51%) the dominant class, Bacteroidales (16. 6%) the dominant order, and Lentimicrobiaceae (14. 23%) was the dominant family per the abundance analysis. Shannon (2. 28) and Chao 1 (87. 0) diversity indices support the existence of higher microbial diversity in RMHSK (50717 OTUs).

The microbial diversity of RMHSK is reported for the first time through a metagenomic study. Identification of microorganisms with characteristics that are relevant to industries.