Taxonomically-linked growth phenotypes during arsenic stress among arsenic resistant bacteria isolated from soils overlying the Centralia coal seam fire
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Microbiology, Soil Science
- Keywords
- extremophiles/extremophily, microbial communities, microbial ecology, microbiology of unexplored habitats, pollution microbiology
- Copyright
- © 2017 Dunivin et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Taxonomically-linked growth phenotypes during arsenic stress among arsenic resistant bacteria isolated from soils overlying the Centralia coal seam fire. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2451v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2451v2
Abstract
Arsenic (As), a toxic element, has impacted life since early Earth. Thus, microorganisms have evolved many As resistance and tolerance mechanisms to improve their survival outcomes given As exposure. We isolated As resistant bacteria from Centralia, PA, the site of an underground coal seam fire that has been burning since 1962. From a 57.4°C soil collected from a vent above the fire, we isolated 25 unique aerobic arsenic resistant bacteria spanning six genera. We examined their diversity, resistance gene content, transformation abilities, inhibitory concentrations, and growth phenotypes. Although As concentrations were low at the time of soil collection (2.58 ppm), isolates had high minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of arsenate and arsenite (>300 mM and 20 mM respectively), and most isolates were capable of arsenate reduction. We screened isolates (PCR and sequencing) using 12 published primer sets for six As resistance genes (AsRG). Genes encoding arsenate reductase (arsC) and arsenite efflux pumps (arsB, ACR3(2)) were present, and phylogenetic incongruence between 16S rRNA genes and AsRG provided evidence for horizontal gene transfer. A detailed investigation of differences in isolate growth phenotypes across As concentrations (lag time to exponential growth, maximum growth rate, and maximum OD590) showed a relationship with taxonomy, providing information that could help to predict an isolate’s performance given arsenic exposure in situ. Our results suggest that considering taxonomically-linked tolerance and potential for resistance transferability from the rare biosphere will inform strategies for microbiological management and remediation of environmental As and contribute to a larger consideration of As-exposed microbial ecology.
Author Comment
We have revised this version to address reviewer comments about methods clarity and presentation/framing of the interesting outcomes of the work. Also, we have added an additional analysis that asks about the isolates' abundances in the original soil sample using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.
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