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Abundance and activity of vinyl chloride (VC)-oxidizing bacteria in a dilute groundwater VC plume biostimulated with oxygen and ethene

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Clean-up of vinyl chloride (VC)-contaminated groundwater could be enhanced by stimulating aerobic VC-oxidizing bacterial populations (e.g., methanotrophs) with amendments such as molecular oxygen. In addition, ethene gas injection could further stimulate a different group of aerobic ethene- and VC-oxidizing bacteria called “etheneotrophs.” We estimated the abundance and activity of these different VC-oxidizing bacteria in portions of a dilute groundwater VC plume subjected to oxygen and ethene biostimulation. Pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes, amplified from community DNA extracted from five groundwater monitoring wells, revealed that Proteobacteria dominated the microbial community. Among the Proteobacteria, methanotroph relative abundance was 6.00 % (well RB52I), 2.81 % (well RB46D), 56.3 % (well RB58I), 23.8 % (well RB63I), and 2.57 % (well RB64I). Reverse transcription qPCR (RT-qPCR) analysis was used to determined methanotroph and etheneotroph functional gene expression from selected monitoring wells. Resulting transcript per gene ratios for methanotroph functional genes (pmoA and mmoX) were 0.013 (RB46D), 0.017 (RB63I), 0.112 (RB64I), and 0.004 (RB46D), 0.239 (RB63I), and 0.199 (RB64I), respectively. Transcript per gene ratios for etheneotroph functional genes (etnC and etnE) were 0.37 (RB46D), 0.81 (RB63I), 5.85 (RB64I), and 0.38 (RB46D), 0.67 (RB63I), and 2.28 (RB64I), respectively. When considered along with geochemical and contaminant data from these wells, our RT-qPCR results suggest that methanotrophs and etheneotrophs were participating in VC cometabolism. We conclude that these molecular diagnostic techniques could be helpful to site managers interested in documenting the effectiveness of VC bioremediation strategies.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Bill Richard of EST Associates, Inc. for collecting groundwater samples and Jim Begley with MT Environmental Restoration for coordinating site access and providing groundwater geochemical and contaminant data collected from the Carver site monitoring wells. This work was funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) under project ER-1683.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical statement

This work complies with the Ethical Standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Iowa, 4105 Seamans Center, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA

    Timothy E. Mattes, Yang Oh Jin, Joshua Livermore, Meredith Pearl & Xikun Liu

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  1. Timothy E. Mattes
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  2. Yang Oh Jin
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  3. Joshua Livermore
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Correspondence to Timothy E. Mattes.

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Mattes, T.E., Jin, Y.O., Livermore, J. et al. Abundance and activity of vinyl chloride (VC)-oxidizing bacteria in a dilute groundwater VC plume biostimulated with oxygen and ethene. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 9267–9276 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6771-2

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