Abstract
Oil spills from pipeline ruptures are a major source of terrestrial petroleum pollution in cold regions. However, our knowledge of the bacterial response to crude oil contamination in cold regions remains to be further expanded, especially in terms of community shifts and potential development of hydrocarbon degraders. In this study we investigated changes of microbial diversity, population size and keystone taxa in permafrost soils at four different sites along the China-Russia crude oil pipeline prior to and after perturbation with crude oil. We found that crude oil caused a decrease of cell numbers together with a reduction of the species richness and shifts in the dominant phylotypes, while bacterial community diversity was highly site-specific after exposure to crude oil, reflecting different environmental conditions. Keystone taxa that strongly co-occurred were found to form networks based on trophic interactions, that is co-metabolism regarding degradation of hydrocarbons (in contaminated samples) or syntrophic carbon cycling (in uncontaminated samples). With this study we demonstrate that after severe crude oil contamination a rapid establishment of endemic hydrocarbon degrading communities takes place under favorable temperature conditions. Therefore, both endemism and trophic correlations of bacterial degraders need to be considered in order to develop effective cleanup strategies.
Highlights
Proteomics) to biodegradation studies has been providing a more comprehensive view of microbial community structure, dynamics and functioning at the contaminated sites[12,13]
In the first part of this work we applied 16 S rRNA deep amplicon sequencing to examine the bacterial biodiversity and community structure in permafrost upper active layer located in an area crossed by the large China-Russia crude oil pipeline (CRCOP) and how they change in response to crude oil contamination in the event of an accidental oil spill
This has been shown as a common trend in microbial populations exposed to hydrocarbons and has been demonstrated based on 16 S rRNA genes[23,24] and in relation to functional genes for hydrocarbon degradation such as alkane monooxigenase, cytochrome P450, alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase[24]
Summary
Proteomics) to biodegradation studies has been providing a more comprehensive view of microbial community structure, dynamics and functioning at the contaminated sites[12,13]. By presenting a conclusive workflow to analyse large-scale environmental sequencing data, moves forward from a standard phylogenetic inventory and advances greatly our understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In specific this is one of the first contributions to the field of microbial ecology of hydrocarbon contaminated permafrost, and our findings on the evolution of degraders communities provides scientific support to the future development of site-specific bioremediation treatments in cold regions
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