Fish gill microbiome from India’s largest Brahmaputra River—a trans-border biodiversity hotspot region

In this study, we sequenced the V3–V4 region of 16S rRNA gene amplicon using paired-end Illumina HiSeq to study the bacterial community in the gills of fish from the bank of the trans-border river of Brahmaputra, Northeast India. Metagenome data consisted of 278,784 reads, 248-bp length, and 56.48% GC content with 85% sequence having a Phred score Q = 30. Community metagenomics revealed a total of 631 genera belonging to 22 different phyla, dominated by Proteobacteria (118,222 features), Firmicutes (101,043 features), Actinobacteria (34,189 features), Bacteroidetes (17,977 features), and Cyanobacteria (2730 features). The bacterial community identified was composed of both pathogenic zoonotic and non-harmful groups. The pathway or functional analysis of the fish gill microbiome exhibited 21 different pathways which also included the pathogenic-related functions. Our data detected a wide group of bacterial communities that will be useful in further isolating and characterizing the pathogenic bacteria from the fish and also to understand the bacterial association in highly consumed fish.