Abstract
Global groundwater resources are constantly challenged by a multitude of contaminants such as aromatic hydrocarbons. Especially in anaerobic habitats, a large diversity of unrecognized microbial populations may be responsible for their degradation. Still, our present understanding of the respective microbiota and their ecophysiology is almost exclusively based on a small number of cultured organisms, mostly within the Proteobacteria. Here, by DNA-based stable isotope probing (SIP), we directly identified the most active sulfate-reducing toluene degraders in a diverse sedimentary microbial community originating from a tar-oil-contaminated aquifer at a former coal gasification plant. On incubation of fresh sediments with 13C7-toluene, the production of both sulfide and 13CO2 was clearly coupled to the 13C-labeling of DNA of microbes related to Desulfosporosinus spp. within the Peptococcaceae (Clostridia). The screening of labeled DNA fractions also suggested a novel benzylsuccinate synthase alpha-subunit (bssA) sequence type previously only detected in the environment to be tentatively affiliated with these degraders. However, carbon flow from the contaminant into degrader DNA was only ∼50%, pointing toward high ratios of heterotrophic CO2-fixation during assimilation of acetyl-CoA originating from the contaminant by these degraders. These findings demonstrate that the importance of non-proteobacterial populations in anaerobic aromatics degradation, as well as their specific ecophysiology in the subsurface may still be largely ungrasped.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the Research Unit ‘Analysis and Modeling of Diffusion/Dispersion-limited Reactions in Porous Media’ (FOR 525), as well as the Priority Programme ‘Anaerobic Transformation of Hydrocarbons’ (SPP 1319). The authors thank T Wendel and D Steidle (University of Tübingen) for the help with site access, G Teichmann (IGÖ, Neuherberg) for help with GC-MS and U.Kunapuli (IGÖ) for help with medium preparation.
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Winderl, C., Penning, H., Netzer, F. et al. DNA-SIP identifies sulfate-reducing Clostridia as important toluene degraders in tar-oil-contaminated aquifer sediment. ISME J 4, 1314–1325 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2010.54
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2010.54
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