Analysis of prokaryotic microbial diversity in hot spring water from Bantang (China) using the targeted amplicon analysis

Bantang hot spring is natural, geologically formed by the aggregation of both cold and hot spring water. For the first time, this study combined 16S rRNA genes high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics analyses to determine the prokaryotic microbe diversity and community structure in the water. A total of 5266 OTUs were obtained, and the community of water was found to comprise 32 bacterial phyla with the most abundant phylum of members belonging to Proteobacteria, and six archaeal phyla with the most abundant phylum of members belonging to Woesearchaeota. Alphaproteobacteria, Burkholderiales, and Comamonadaceae were the highest represented classified species at the level of class, order, and family, respectively. The most abundant bacterial and archaeal genus were Subdivision3 genera incertae sedis and Pacearchaeota Incertae Sedis AR13, and more than a quarter of microorganisms were unclassified genus. Among the top 50 most abundant OTUs, 18 OTUs including the earliest and latest species in evolution have not yet been classified. In the COG analysis, ‘General function prediction only’ was found to be the highest represented category, whereas among predicted KEGG pathways, ‘Membrane Transport’ was the most abundant. Thus, findings from this study greatly improve our understanding to explore novel microorganisms in future.