Microbial diversity of river Ganga at Haridwar (Uttarakhand) through metagenomic approaches

Abstract

People revere the Ganga for providing the ecosystem and environment, which are vital for giving life and sustaining it. It's spiritual, mythological, socio-cultural, and historical importance to Indians adds to its significance. This river also supports a very diverse array of life forms, including plants, animals, and microorganisms. The current investigation involves the metagenomic analysis of collected samples taken from three separate sampling points along the length of the river. By employing the CCMetagen and MG-RAST web servers, metagenomic sequence data was analyzed to comprehend microbial diversity. While Methano regulaboonei, Methanosae tathermophila, and Methanosarcina acetivoran are the most prevalent archeans, the most abundant bacteria are Novosphingobium aromaticivorans, Erythrobacter litoralis, and Sphingopyxis alaskensis. Malassezia globosa, Ustilago maydis, and Neosartorya fumigata are the fungi with the highest number of processed reads, whereas the top three viruses are Rhizobium phage 16-3, Pseudomonas phage 73, and Phage phiJL001. The identified bacterial species are very diverse, as deduced from the phylogenetic analysis. This brought forward the alpha diversity of the water sample under study and enabled us to categorize it according to their relative taxonomic abundances among various levels of the hierarchy, including classes, orders, and families. The taxonomic richness and evenness at different hierarchical levels were also obtained from the data. Such a study will bring forward an in-depth analysis of the microbial diversity of the river Ganges.