Authors: Alexandra K Shibata Françoise M Robert
Publish Date: 2009/05/18
Volume: 25, Issue: 9, Pages: 1667-1675
Abstract
The effect of plants milo oleander and buffelgrass and hexadecane 1 g/kg of soil on the diversity of hexadecanedegraders in a coastal soil was investigated Hexadecane was rapidly degraded during the first 56 days Its depletion was not plantenhanced but was slightly retarded by milo and buffelgrass The diversity of the dominant cultured hexadecanedegrading bacteria was based on sequencing of the V68 region of 16S rDNA On day 0 Alphaproteobacteria prevailed By day 56 Gammaproteobacteria dominated the contaminated samples whereas similar numbers of Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria genotypes occurred in the uncontaminated samples Bacteria related to Alcanivorax a specialized alkanedegrading marine bacterium were found in all contaminated samples except for buffelgrass rhizospheres which solely harbored Pseudomonas indica On day 114 when hexadecane was highly depleted in the contaminated treatments similar numbers of Alpha and Gammaproteobacteria genotypes occurred in contaminated and uncontaminated samples At this stage Alcanivorax had virtually disappeared Thus in this coastal soil the prevalence of the alkanedependent Alcanivorax may be a useful indicator of bioremediation progress provided the plant cover favors the dominance of Alcanivorax
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