Abstract
Microbiomes of freshwater basins intended for human use remain poorly studied, with very little known about the microbial response to in situ oil spills. Lake Pertusillo is an artificial freshwater reservoir in Basilicata, Italy, and serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than one and a half million people in the region. Notably, it is located in close proximity to one of the largest oil extraction plants in Europe. The lake suffered a major oil spill in 2017, where approximately 400 tons of crude oil spilled into the lake; importantly, the pollution event provided a rare opportunity to study how the lacustrine microbiome responds to petroleum hydrocarbon contamination. Water samples were collected from Lake Pertusillo 10 months prior to and 3 months after the accident. The presence of hydrocarbons was verified and the taxonomic and functional aspects of the lake microbiome were assessed. The analysis revealed specialized successional patterns of lake microbial communities that were potentially capable of degrading complex, recalcitrant hydrocarbons, including aromatic, chloroaromatic, nitroaromatic, and sulfur containing aromatic hydrocarbons. Our findings indicated that changes in the freshwater microbial community were associated with the oil pollution event, where microbial patterns identified in the lacustrine microbiome 3 months after the oil spill were representative of its hydrocarbonoclastic potential and may serve as effective proxies for lacustrine oil pollution.
Highlights
Petroleum hydrocarbons are one of the most common sources of anthropogenic pollution and cause frequent contamination of both aquatic and terrestrial environments
It can be observed that, while environmental samples 1B and 2B and the microcosm with diesel (1B_LB_D) maintain a microbiome structure dominated by Proteobacteria, an absence of hydrocarbons in the 1B_LB sample caused a drastic reduction of Proteobacteria and increase in Firmicutes; taken together, these indicate that most hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria in Lake Pertusillo belong to phylum Proteobacteria
While multiple studies have been conducted on microbial response to petroleum hydrocarbon contamination in the marine environment, little is known about microbial response to oil spills in lacustrine and freshwater environments owing to scarcity of studies on the same
Summary
Petroleum hydrocarbons are one of the most common sources of anthropogenic pollution and cause frequent contamination of both aquatic and terrestrial environments. While various biological systems have been used for restoration of oil-polluted habitats, microbial restoration methods are the most commonly used and often the cheapest alternative. Such remedial technologies are based on the metabolic versatility of microbes which, unlike other complex organisms, have the capability to degrade a diversity of xenobiotic compounds. The availability of massively parallel sequencing technologies and sophisticated bioinformatic tools have facilitated holistic studies on microbial bioremediation and highlighted the need to study microbiomes in their totality
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