Assessment of the Microbiome of the Roman Baths, United Kingdom, by Oxford Nanopore full-length 16S rRNA Gene Sequencing

Background: The Roman Baths, UK is a UNESCO world heritage site which contains one of the few thermal springs in the British Isles. Previous investigations of the site have isolated a handful of novel bacterial species with metabolic characteristics that are in keeping with the reported geochemistry of the waters that may have potential commercial bio-catalytic value. However, no assessments of the microbiome of the waters have been reported to date. We profiled the microbiome of the thermal waters by means of full-length 16S rRNA gene profiling using an Oxford Nanopore MinIONTM sequencer.Results: Our analysis returned 1,163,873 reads that were classified across 10 bacterial phyla and 14 classes. Betaproteobacteria dominated, whilst classes containing species previously isolated from the waters using culture-based methods made a very small portion of the sample. The analysis also returned reads classified into 28 genera which are diverse; some have been reported to have metabolic characteristics that are in keeping with the known geochemistry of the waters and are of potential bio-catalytic value.Conclusions: The data presented in this report, to the best of our knowledge, give the first assessment of the microbiome of the thermal spring waters of the Roman Baths, UK. The data show a diverse microbiome that is more comprehensive than what has previously been isolated by culture techniques and highlights the presence of bacterial species with reported metabolisms suited to the reported geochemistry of the waters and they may have potential commercial value.