Responses of microbial community from tropical pristine coastal soil to crude oil contamination
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
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Abstract
Brazilian offshore crude oil exploration has increased after the discovery of new reservoirs in the region known as pré-sal, in a depth of 7.000 m under the water surface. Oceanic Islands near these areas represent sensitive environments, where changes in microbial communities due to oil contamination could cause the loss of metabolic functions, with catastrophic effects to the soil services provided from these locations. This work aimed to evaluate the effect of petroleum contamination on microbial community shifts (Archaea, Bacteria and Fungi) from Trindade Island coastal soils. Microcosms were assembled and divided into two treatments, control and contaminated (weathered crude oil at the concentration of 30 g kg-1), in triplicate. Soils were incubated for 38 days, with CO2 measurements every four hours. After incubation, the total DNA was extracted, purified and submitted for high-throughput target sequencing of 16S rDNA, for Bacteria and Archaea domains and Fungal ITS1 region, using the Illumina MiSeq platform. Three days after contamination, the CO2 emission rate peaked at more than 20x the control and the emissions remained higher during the whole incubation period. Microbial alpha-diversity was reduced for contaminated-samples. Fungal relative abundance of contaminated samples was reduced to almost 40% of the total observed species. Taxonomy comparisons showed a rise of the Actinobacteria phylum, shifts in several Proteobacteria classes and reduction of the Archaea class Nitrososphaerales in oil contaminated microcosms. This is the first effort in acquiring knowledge concerning the effect of crude oil contamination in soils of a Brazilian oceanic island. This information is important to guide any future bioremediation strategy that may be required.
Cite this as
2016. Responses of microbial community from tropical pristine coastal soil to crude oil contamination. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1254v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1254v2note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
Author comment
This version 2 has several changes to increase the text objectivity and clarify the aim and the importance of the study. We re-evaluated the abundance changes between taxa, improved the figures and created an experimental design scheme following the reviewers recommendations. It was resubmitted to PeerJ as the reviewers considered that this manuscript needed major reviews.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Daniel Morais conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Victor Pylro conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ian M Clark analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Penny R Hirsch analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Marcos Tótola conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ethics
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
The National Counsel for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) provided all approvals and permits (project grant number 405544/2012-0 and authorization access to genetic resources process number 010645/2013-6) to conduct the study within this protected area.
DNA Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding the deposition of DNA sequences:
MG-RAST, accession numbers: 4643785.3 and 4643786.3
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
MG-RAST, accession numbers: 4643785.3 and 4643786.3
Funding
National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) grant 405544/2012-0 and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) financed this work. Rothamsted Research receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) of the UK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
