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Diversity and composition of the North Sikkim hot spring mycobiome using a culture-independent method

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Abstract

Fungi are considered to be the most resilient and economically important microbial community that can easily survive and optimally grow under a wide range of growth conditions. Thermophilic fungi from the geothermal sources have been less pondered upon and lie unexplored. Here, a microbiome approach was conducted to understand the concealed world of the environmental mycobiota from the two hot springs of North Sikkim district located in North-east India. The solfataric muds from the hot springs were analyzed. In both the samples, on the basis of genus level classification, genus Fusarium had the highest abundance followed by Colletotrichum, Pochonia, Pyricularia, Neurospora, etc. Analyzing the predicted genes, the functional proteins of New Yume Samdung mycobiome were found to be dominated by the genera Fusarium (22%), Trichoderma (12%), and Aspergillus (11%), whereas in the case of Old Yume Samdung, it was dominated by the genera Aspergillus (11%), Saccharomyces (6%), and Fusarium (5%). Interestingly, in the studied mycobiome, environmental yeasts were also detected. From the functional metagenomics, sulfate adenylatetransferase (SAT) proteins for sulfur assimilation were found in some of the fungal reads. Toxin protein reads such as AM-toxin biosynthesis proteins, AF-toxin biosynthesis proteins, Gliotoxin biosynthesis proteins, and aflatoxin biosynthesis proteins were detected in the mycobiomes.

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Abbreviations

HGB:

Himalayan Geothermal Belt

OYS:

Old Yume Samdung

NYS:

New Yume Samdung

ORF:

Open reading frame

GO:

Gene Ontology

KO:

KEGG Orthology

SRA:

Sequence Read Archive

HQ:

High quality

SAT:

Sulfate adenylatetransferase

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Acknowledgements

SD would like to thank DST INPIRE, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for providing the INSPIRE FELLOWSHIP (IF130091) for research work. The authors thank Bionivid Technology Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, India, for their technical assistance with microbiome sequencing. The authors heartily thank and express their most sincere gratitude to Forest, Environment and Wildlife Management Department, Government of Sikkim, Sikkim Police and North Sikkim administration, for granting research permission, kind cooperation, and support during the field work. The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable suggestion in enriching this manuscript.

Funding

The work was funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (DBT-NER/Health/45/2015 and BT/PR25092/NER/95/1009/2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Sayak Das: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing- Original draft preparation, Data Curation, Formal Analysis. Goshaidas Roy: Field Investigation. Mingma Thundu Sherpa: Field Investigation. Ishfaq Nabi Najar: Field Investigation. Nagendra Thakur: Writing—Review and Editing, Visualization, Supervision.

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Correspondence to Nagendra Thakur.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Das, S., Roy, G., Najar, I.N. et al. Diversity and composition of the North Sikkim hot spring mycobiome using a culture-independent method. Folia Microbiol 66, 457–468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-021-00859-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-021-00859-z

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