I read with great interest a recent study by Poterico and Mestanza who described mutations in 30 SARS‐CoV‐2 genomes from South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru). Next‐generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have accelerated genomic and metagenomic studies providing affordable tools to obtain pathogen genomes and improving diagnosis and surveillance efforts. However, many downstream analyses after assembling the genomes are impacted by low‐quality sequences and sequence contamination, which could lead to wrong conclusion.

Genetic diversity is an important component of biodiversity, and it is crucial for current efforts to protect and sustainably manage several organisms and habitats. As far as we know, there is only one work describing Peruvian genetic information stored in public databases. We aimed to update this previous work searching in four public databases that stored digital sequence information: Nucleotide, BioProject, PATRIC, BOLD. With this information, we comment on the contribution of Peruvian institutions during recent years. In Nucleotide, the largest database, Bacteria are the most sequenced organisms by Peruvian institutions (70.60%), pathogenic bacteria such as Pasteurella multocida, Neisseria meningitidis, and Vibrio parahaemolyticus were the most abundant. We found no sequence records from the Archaea domain. In BioProject, the most common sequence belongs to Salmonella enterica subsp....

Este trabajo fue financiado por el Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cient?fico y Tecnol?gico y de Innovaci?n Tecnol?gica (Fondecyt-Per?) en el marco del ?Proyecto de Mejoramiento y Ampliaci?n de los Servicios del Sistema Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnolog?a e Innovaci?n Tecnol?gica? [N?mero de contrato 34?2019-FONDECYT-BM-INC. INV.], y por el CONCYTEC-FONDECYT en el marco del concurso ?Proyectos Especiales: Respuesta al COVID-19 2020-01? [n?mero de contrato 046-2020-FONDECYT].

The Rimac river is the main source of water for Lima, Peru's capital megacity. The river is constantly affected by different types of contamination including mine tailings in the Andes and urban sewage in the metropolitan area. In this work, we aim to produce the first characterization of aquatic bacterial communities in the Rimac river using a 16S rRNA metabarcoding approach which would be useful to identify bacterial diversity and potential understudied pathogens. We report a lower diversity in bacterial communities from the Lower Rimac (Metropolitan zone) in comparison to other sub-basins. Samples were generally grouped according to their geographical location. Bacterial classes Alphaproteobacteria, Bacteroidia, Campylobacteria, Fusobacteriia, and Gammaproteobacteria were the most frequent along the river. Arcobacter cryaerophilus (Campylobacteria) was the most frequent species in the...

This work was supported by the German funding program “LOEWE − Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-ökonomischer Exzellenz” of the Hesse’s Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, and by JSPS KAKENHI (No. 26291077). P.R. also received a PhD scholarship from CONCYTEC - Peru. We would like to thank Benôit Dayrat, Antonio de Frias Martins, Adrienne Jochum and Alexander Weigand for providing samples or suggestions for this work, and to Claudia Nesselhauf for her support in the laboratory. We also thank the editor and reviewers for their comments on the manuscript. This is Contribution #234, Bermuda Biodiversity Project (BBP), Bermuda Aquarium, Natural History Museum and Zoo, Department of Conservation Services.

This research has been supported by the JPI-Belmont project PACMEDY (via grant ANR-15-JCLI-0003-01 for MC, PB, ME, OM, TC, and BT). MC, JC, DO, RSG, AP, and PR acknowledge funding from Concejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia de Peru (grant n° 007-2017-FONDECYT , grant n° 034-2019-FONDECYT-BM ). SPH acknowledges funding from the ERC-funded project GC2.0 Global Change 2.0: Unlocking the past for a clearer future, grant number 694481 and from the JPI-Belmont project PACMEDY (via NERC ). The distribution and analyses of the transient Holocene simulations with the IPSL model benefit from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Modeling Centre Infrastructure supported by ANR “Investissements d'avenir” program ANR-11-IDEX-0004-17-EURE-0006 .