Abstract
Bacteria employ adaptive mechanisms of mercury (Hg) tolerance to survive in environments containing elevated Hg concentrations. The potential of extracellular polysaccharides (EPS) production by bacteria as a mechanism of Hg tolerance has not been previously investigated. The objectives of this study were to determine if bacterial EPS sorb Hg, and if so does sorption provide protection against Hg toxicity. Purified EPS with different chemical compositions produced by bacterial isolates from microbial mats in French Polynesian atolls and deep-sea hydrothermal vents were assessed for Hg sorption. The data showed that EPS sorbed up to 82% of Hg from solution, that this sorption was dependent on EPS composition, and that sorption was a saturable mechanism. Hg uptake capacities ranged from 0.005 to 0.454 mmol Hg/g for the different EPS. To determine if EPS production could alter bacterial Hg tolerance, Escherichia coli K-12 strains and their EPS defective mutants were tested by the disc inhibition assay. Mercury inhibited growth in a dose-dependent manner with wild-type strains having smaller (~1 mm), but statistically significant, zones of inhibition than various mutants and this difference was related to a 2-fold decline in the amount of EPS produced by the mutants relative to cell biomass. These experiments identified colanic acid and hexosamine as Hg-binding moieties in EPS. Together these data indicate that binding of Hg to EPS affords a low level of resistance to the producing bacteria.
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Notes
Throughout this paper, the term mercury (Hg) is used to generally describe the metal. When specific chemical forms of Hg are considered, these are indicated as Hg(II) relating to ionic Hg or Hg(0) relating to elemental Hg.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge Pacific Biotech SAS (Dr. Xavier Moppert) (Tahiti, French Polynesia) for providing us with EPS from microbial mats from French Polynesian atolls. We also acknowledge the laboratories of Dr. Roberto Kolter, Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Tony Romeo, University of Florida, for providing us with the E. coli strains. Shelly Carpenter and Dr. Jody Deming, University of Washington, are appreciated for providing protocols and advice on EPS measurements. We thank Drs. Kenneth Reuhl, Brian Buckley, Keith Cooper, and Costantino Vetriani for their constructive suggestions. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R25GM-58389, the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute ES005022, Education and Extension Services, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences ES00178.
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Cruz, K., Guézennec, J. & Barkay, T. Binding of Hg by bacterial extracellular polysaccharide: a possible role in Hg tolerance. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 5493–5503 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8239-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8239-z