Overlooked fungal community in industrial wastewaters: diversity analysis using high-throughput sequencing

The diversity of fungi in the environment is still largely overlooked. Very little is known about the diversity of fungi occurring in industrial streams. This study aims to characterize the fungal diversity of different industrial effluents using high-throughput sequencing approach. In a total of 2,34,617 quality filtered reads were obtained from the collected wastewater samples. Phylogenetic taxonomy revealed that the members of the fungal communities were assigned to 6 phyla, 31 classes, 79 orders, 144 families and 192 genera. Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were the most dominant phylum whose relative abundance ranged from 23.29% to 38.31% and 17.34% to 33.51% respectively. Observed OTUs ranged from 292 (Dixon) to 427 (Capegate). Core fungal genera identified in the industrial wastewater were strongly influenced by the physicochemical variables and had the potential to play important roles in the organic decomposition, pollutant degradation, and xenobiotic transformation. The occurrence of unclassified fungal sequences (22.5% to 33.09%) suggests that these effluents are a potential reservoir of diverse fungal communities which is yet uncharacterized.