Abstract
Ibusuki hot spring is located on the coastline of Kagoshima Bay, Japan. The hot spring water is characterized by high salinity, high temperature, and neutral pH. The hot spring is covered by the sea during high tide, which leads to severe fluctuations in several environmental variables. A combination of molecular- and culture-based techniques was used to determine the bacterial and archaeal diversity of the hot spring. A total of 48 thermophilic bacterial strains were isolated from two sites (Site 1: 55.6°C; Site 2: 83.1°C) and they were categorized into six groups based on their 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Two groups (including 32 isolates) demonstrated low sequence similarity with published species, suggesting that they might represent novel taxa. The 148 clones from the Site 1 bacterial library included 76 operational taxonomy units (OTUs; 97% threshold), while 132 clones from the Site 2 bacterial library included 31 OTUs. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes were frequently detected in both clone libraries. The clones were related to thermophilic, mesophilic and psychrophilic bacteria. Approximately half of the sequences in bacterial clone libraries shared <92% sequence similarity with their closest sequences in a public database, suggesting that the Ibusuki hot spring may harbor a unique and novel bacterial community. By contrast, 77 clones from the Site 2 archaeal library contained only three OTUs, most of which were affiliated with Thaumarchaeota.
Citations
Citations to this article as recorded by

- Unraveling microbial life from a high-altitude hydrothermal system in the Andes plateau and their potential for nitrogen transformations
Coral Pardo-Esté, Juan Castro-Severyn, Jacqueline Aldridge, Diego Alvarez-Saravia, Lenka Kurte, Polette Aguilar-Muñoz, Pablo Paquis, Vilma Pérez, David Medina, Wade H Jeffrey, Verónica Molina, Martha B Hengst
Engineering Microbiology.2025; 5(4): 100242. CrossRef - Bacterial diversity along the geothermal gradients: insights from the high-altitude Himalayan hot spring habitats of Sikkim
Santosh Kumar, Sayak Das, Namrata Jiya, Avinash Sharma, Chirantan Saha, Prayatna Sharma, Sonia Tamang, Nagendra Thakur
Current Research in Microbial Sciences.2024; 7: 100310. CrossRef - Thermophilic microorganisms involved in the nitrogen cycle in thermal environments: Advances and prospects
Xiao-Wei Wang, Xin Tan, Cheng-Cheng Dang, Yang Lu, Guo-Jun Xie, Bing-Feng Liu
Science of The Total Environment.2023; 896: 165259. CrossRef - Diversity and functional roles of the symbiotic microbiome associated to marine sponges off Karah Island, Terengganu, Malaysia
Yuki Hayami, Logajothiswaran Ambalavanan, Sandra Catherine Zainathan, Muhd Danish-Daniel, Noor Emilia Sharifah, Shumpei Iehata
Regional Studies in Marine Science.2023; 62: 102967. CrossRef - Diversity of microbial communities in hot springs of Sri Lanka as revealed by 16S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing analysis
Dilini Sadeepa, Kosala Sirisena, Pathmalal M. Manage
Gene.2022; 812: 146103. CrossRef - Metagenomic Approach to Bacterial Diversity and Lipolytic Enzymes’ Genes from a Steam Soil of Los Humeros Geothermal Field (Puebla, México)
Paola Carolina Mora-González, Graciela Espinosa-Luna, Abril Ramírez-Higuera, Carolina Peña-Montes, Gerardo Valerio-Alfaro, Alejandro Sánchez-Flores, Rodolfo Quintana-Castro, María-Guadalupe Sánchez-Otero, Rosa María Oliart-Ros
Geomicrobiology Journal.2021; 38(4): 304. CrossRef - Submarine Shallow-Water Fluid Emissions and Their Geomicrobiological Imprint: A Global Overview
Giorgio Caramanna, Stefan M. Sievert, Solveig I. Bühring
Frontiers in Marine Science.2021;[Epub] CrossRef - Diversity of Aerobic Bacilli Analysis Using Molecular and Culture-Based Approaches in Debagh Hot Spring
Mounia Arab, Sofiane Bakour, Rym Lalaoui, Nadia Aissaoui, Fatima Nas, Amina Hoceini, Pierre-Edouard Fournier, Nihel Klouche-Khelil
Geomicrobiology Journal.2019; 36(2): 137. CrossRef - Thermoactinomycetes isolated from geothermal springs in Armenia capable of producing extracellular hydrolases
Hovik Panosyan
Environmental Sustainability.2019; 2(3): 219. CrossRef - Biodiversity of the microbial mat of the Garga hot spring
Alexey Sergeevich Rozanov, Alla Victorovna Bryanskaya, Timofey Vladimirovich Ivanisenko, Tatyana Konstantinovna Malup, Sergey Evgenievich Peltek
BMC Evolutionary Biology.2017;[Epub] CrossRef - Effects of Physiochemical Factors on Prokaryotic Biodiversity in Malaysian Circumneutral Hot Springs
Chia S. Chan, Kok-Gan Chan, Robson Ee, Kar-Wai Hong, María S. Urbieta, Edgardo R. Donati, Mohd S. Shamsir, Kian M. Goh
Frontiers in Microbiology.2017;[Epub] CrossRef - Exploration and isolation of novel thermophiles in frozen enrichment cultures derived from a terrestrial acidic hot spring
Hiroyuki D. Sakai, Norio Kurosawa
Extremophiles.2016; 20(2): 207. CrossRef -
Achromobacter buckle infection diagnosed by a 16S rDNA clone library analysis: a case report
Fumika Hotta, Hiroshi Eguchi, Takeshi Naito, Yoshinori Mitamura, Kohei Kusujima, Tomomi Kuwahara
BMC Ophthalmology.2014;[Epub] CrossRef