Metagenomic Investigation of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversity of Hammam Essalihine Hot Spring from Khenchela, Algeria

Abstract

Hot springs are natural environments where hot groundwater comes out from the earth. Exploring the microbial diversity present in hot springs is important first to determine the microorganisms able to proliferate there and to understand their role in biogeochemical cycles. In Algeria, research concerning microbial populations in those ecosystems is limited. This study describes bacterial and archaeal diversity of the ‘Hammam Essalihine’ hot spring in Khenchela province in north-east Algeria using a culture-independent approach. This is the first microbial diversity investigation in the ‘Hammam Essalihine’ hot spring using next-generation sequencing techniques to assess the species classification of thermophilic microorganisms. Genomic DNA was extracted from water samples and the V4–V5 region of 16S rRNA gene were amplified, sequenced, and analyzed. The average temperature of water varies from 68 to 70 °C. High-throughput sequencing analysis revealed the presence of 21 bacterial phyla, including an unknown phylum and distributed across 42 families and 39 genera. The majority of the sequences were observed to belong to the kingdom Bacteria. The bacterial community from this hot spring is dominated by Proteobacteria (41.52%), Chloroflexi (7.62%), and Bacteroidetes (7.62%), whereas the community of Archaea is scarcely present in the study site and the two identified operational taxonomic units (OTUs) are far from what is known in the GenBank database. The study shows several uncharacterized sequences, indicating that the water of ‘Hammam Essalihine’ hot spring contains undescribed microorganisms. This study is thought to add to the understanding of thermophile diversity and ecology of ‘Hammam Essalihine’ hot spring.

Keywords:

• Bacterial community
• diversity
• Khenchela hot spring
• metagenomics
• 16S rRNA gene sequencing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study received financial support from the following organizations: The Algerian Ministry of Higher Education to M. Adjeroud and the Xunta de Galicia (Consolidación D.O.G. X-12-2016) co-financed by FEDER [grant number 2016/012] to the EXPRELA group. (University of A Coruña, Spain).