Microbial community structure in Wahava hot springs in Sri Lanka

Chemical wastes generated through industrial settings due to the excess usage of chemical catalysts drastically affect the floral and faunal diversity of the ecosystem. To minimize the number of chemical catalysts used in industries, thermophilic bacteria inhabiting hot springs can provide substitutions. The extremozymes produced by these bacteria can tolerate extreme chemical and physical conditions of industrial settings. Therefore, the characterization of the microbial communities in hot springs is vital for identifying industrially important extremophilic microbes and their enzymes. Hence, the present study focused on the microbial diversity of Wahava hot springs in Sri Lanka. The bacteria and archaea diversity of the artesian tube well and dug well at the Wahava hot spring site were analyzed using 16S amplicon sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Temperature, conductivity, pH, and Dissolved Oxygen (DO) were measured at the site. The temperature of the Wahava artesian tube well and dug well springs varied from 42.1 ⁰C – 42.8 ⁰C. The conductivity, pH, and DO vary from 1,378 to 1,474 μS/cm, 7.91 to 7.97, and 3.50 to 1.05 mg/L, respectively. Bacterial phyla, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Deinococcus-Thermus were recorded in the artesian tube well; Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi and Bacteroidota were the major bacterial phyla in the dug well. The archaea percentage of the microbial community in the artesian tube well and dug well were 0.004% and 0.03%, respectively. In both hot springs, 0.57% of each bacterial community belongs to Deinococcus-Thermus, a phylum highly resistant to environmental hazards (extreme pH, extreme temperatures, xenobiotics, etc.) was recorded. Results show that Wahava hot springs had a rich source of the thermophilic microbial community. Further studies of biotechnological prospects in this area are being conducted.