Citation:
Sandrine Paissé, Frédéric Coulon, Marisol Goñi-Urriza, Louis Peperzak, Terry J. McGenity, Robert Duran, Structure of bacterial communities along a hydrocarbon contamination gradient in a coastal sediment, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 66, Issue 2, Date: November 2008, Pages: 295-305
Abstract:
The bacterial diversity of a chronically oil-polluted retention basin sediment
located in the Berre lagoon (Etang-de-Berre, France) was investigated. This
study combines chemical and molecular approaches in order to define how the in
situ petroleum hydrocarbon contamination level affects the bacterial community
structure of a subsurface sediment. Hydrocarbon content analysis clearly
revealed a gradient of hydrocarbon contamination in both the water and the
sediment following the basin periphery from the pollution input to the lagoon
water. The nC17 and pristane concentrations suggested alkane biodegradation in
the sediments. These results, combined with those of terminal-restriction
fragment length polymorphism analysis of the 16S rRNA genes, indicated that
bacterial community structure was obviously associated with the gradient of oil
contamination. The analysis of bacterial community composition revealed
dominance of bacteria related to the Proteobacteria phylum (Gamma-, Delta-,
Alpha-, Epsilon- and Betaproteobacteria), Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobium
groups and Spirochaetes, Actinobacteria and Cyanobacteria phyla. The adaptation
of the bacterial community to oil contamination was not characterized by
dominance of known oildegrading bacteria, because a predominance of populations
associated to the sulphur cycle was observed. The input station presented
particular bacterial community composition associated with a low oil
concentration in the sediment, indicating the adaptation of this community to
the oil contamination.