Hydrocarbon-degrading Bacteria (hydrocarbon-degrading + bacteria)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria: the oil-spill clean-up crew

MICROBIAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, Issue 6 2009
Rob J. W. Brooijmans
[source]


Efficacy of intervention strategies for bioremediation of crude oil in marine systems and effects on indigenous hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria

ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 6 2007
Boyd A. McKew
Summary There is little information on how different strategies for the bioremediation of marine oil spills influence the key indigenous hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria (hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria, HCB), and hence their remediation efficacy. Therefore, we have used quantitative polymerase chain reaction to analyse changes in concentrations of HCB in response to intervention strategies applied to experimental microcosms. Biostimulation with nutrients (N and P) produced no measurable increase in either biodegradation or concentration of HCB within the first 5 days, but after 15 days there was a significant increase (29%; P < 0.05) in degradation of n -alkanes, and an increase of one order of magnitude in concentration of Thalassolituus (to 107 cells ml,1). Rhamnolipid bioemulsifier additions alone had little effect on biodegradation, but, in combination with nutrient additions, provoked a significant increase: 59% (P < 0.05) more n -alkane degradation by 5 days than was achieved with nutrient additions alone. The very low Alcanivorax cell concentrations in the microcosms were hardly influenced by addition of nutrients or bioemulsifier, but strongly increased after their combined addition, reflecting the synergistic action of the two types of biostimulatory agents. Bioaugmentation with Thalassolituus positively influenced hydrocarbon degradation only during the initial 5 days and only of the n -alkane fraction. Bioaugmentation with Alcanivorax was clearly much more effective, resulting in 73% greater degradation of n -alkanes, 59% of branched alkanes, and 28% of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, in the first 5 days than that obtained through nutrient addition alone (P < 0.01). Enhanced degradation due to augmentation with Alcanivorax continued throughout the 30-day period of the experiment. In addition to providing insight into the factors limiting oil biodegradation over time, and the competition and synergism between HCB, these results add weight to the use of bioaugmentation in oil pollution mitigation strategies. [source]


Detection of known and novel genes encoding aromatic ring-hydroxylating dioxygenases in soils and in aromatic hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria

FEMS MICROBIOLOGY LETTERS, Issue 1 2002
Paul M Taylor
Abstract Primers were designed and successfully used to screen aromatic hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria for the presence of class II aromatic ring-hydroxylating dioxygenase (RHD) genes and to amplify novel RHD genes from DNA extracted from soil using the polymerase chain reaction. Two previously undiscovered groups of genes encoding putative class II RHDs, designated the S and T clusters, were found in RHD different soil samples. Only one of 70 RHD gene fragments amplified from these soil samples could be assigned to a cluster of previously reported RHD genes. These results suggest that distinct and potentially numerically dominant groups of as-yet unrecognized aromatic hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria exist in soils. [source]


Response of bacterial community during bioremediation of an oil-polluted soil,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 2 2003
M. Zucchi
Abstract Aim: To study the response of the bacterial community to bioremediation of a soil with an aged contamination of crude oil. Methods and Results: The bacterial community in laboratory soil columns during a 72-day biostimulation treatment was followed by analysing the number of total cultivable hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria, soil respiratory activity and the 16S,23S rDNA internal transcribed spacer homoduplex heteroduplex polymorphisms (ITS-HHP) of total soil bacterial DNA. ITS-HHP permits an estimate of both length and sequence polymorphism in a 16S,23S rDNA spacer population, using to advantage the homoduplex and heteroduplex fragments that are generated during PCR. The treatment, made by air sparging and biostimulation with a mineral nutrient and surfactant solution, resulted in a 39·5% decrease of the total hydrocarbon content. Within 4 days of treatment onset the bacterial community underwent a first phase of activation that led to a substantial increase in the observable diversity. Subsequently, after a 12-day period of stability, another activation phase was observed with further shifts of the community structure and an increase in the abundance and diversity of catechol-2,3-dioxygenase (C23O) genes. Conclusions: The overall data suggest an important contribution of uncultivable bacteria to the soil bioremediation, since, during the second activation phase, the increases of the respiratory activity, bacterial diversity and C23O gene abundance and diversity were not accompanied by a corresponding increase of the cultivable bacteria number. Significance and Impact of the Study: This study shows that successive phases of activation of bacterial populations occur during a bioremediation treatment of oil-polluted soil. [source]