Authors: Anna Rosa Sprocati Chiara Alisi Flavia Tasso Alessia Fiore Paola Marconi Francesca Langella Götz Haferburg Andrei Nicoara Aurora Neagoe Erika Kothe
Publish Date: 2013/06/18
Volume: 21, Issue: 11, Pages: 6824-6835
Abstract
The planetary importance of microbial function requires urgently that our knowledge and our exploitation ability is extended therefore every occasion of bioprospecting is welcome In this work bioprospecting is presented from the perspective of the UMBRELLA project whose main goal was to develop an integral approach for remediation of soil influenced by mining activity by using microorganisms in association with plants Accordingly this work relies on the cultivable fraction of microbial biodiversity native to six mining sites across Europe different for geographical climatic and geochemical characteristics but similar for suffering from chronic stress The comparative analysis of the soil functional diversity resulting from the metabolic profiling at community level BIOLOG ECOPlates and confirmed by the multivariate analysis separates the six soils in two clusters identifying soils characterised by low functional diversity and low metabolic activity The microbial biodiversity falls into four major bacterial phyla Actinobacteria Proteobacteria Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes including a total of 47 genera and 99 species In each soil despite harsh conditions metabolic capacity of nitrogen fixation and plant growth promotion were quite widespread and most of the strains showed multiple resistances to heavy metals At specieslevel Shannon’s index alpha diversity and Sørensens Similarity beta diversity indicates the sites are indeed diverse Multivariate analysis of soil chemical factors and biodiversity identifies for each soil welldiscriminating chemical factors and species supporting the assumption that cultured biodiversity from the six mining sites presents at phylum level a convergence correlated to soil factors rather than to geographical factors while at species level reflects a remarkable local characterisation
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