Abstract
Heavy metal content analysis of River Torsa in India did not indicate any alarming level of toxicity for human consumption but revealed variation at the ppb level in different months. The variation in recoverable nickel and zinc resistant copiotrophic (or eutrophic) bacterial counts was explained by the variation of the zinc content (34.0–691.3 ppb) of the river water in different sampling months. Growth studies conducted with some purified nickel and/or zinc resistant strains revealed that pre-exposure of the cells to ppb levels of Zn2+, comparable to the indigenous zinc ion concentration of the river, could induce the nickel or zinc resistance. A minimum concentration of 5–10 μM Zn2+ (325–650 ppb) was found effective in inducing the Nickel resistance of the isolates. Zinc resistance of the isolates was tested by pre-exposing the cells to 4 μM Zn2+ (260 ppb). The lag phase was reduced by 6–8 h in all the cases. Biochemical characteristics and phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rDNA sequence indicated that some of the Torsa River isolates, having inducible nickel and zinc resistance, are members of the genus Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Bacillus, Enterobacter, Serratia and Moraxella.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Altschul SF, Madden TL, Schäffer AA, Zhang J, Zhang Z, Miller W, Lipman DJ (1997) Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programs. Nucleic Acid Res 25:3389–3402
APHA (1985) Standard methods for examination of water and waste water, 17th edn. APHA, Washington
Baker AJM, Brooks RR (1989) Terrestrial higher plants that hyper accumulate metallic elements. A review of their distribution, ecology and phytochemistry. Biorecovery 1:81–126
Bhadra B (2006) Identification of nickel resistant genes in suitable Gram-negative bacterial isolates with reference to the physicochemical and sanitary status of river Torsa. Thesis, Department of Botany, North Bengal University, Siliguri
Bhadra B, Mukherjee S, Chakraborty R, Nanda AK (2003) Physicochemical and bacteriological investigation on the river Torsa of North Bengal. J Environ Biol 24:125–133
Bhadra B, Das S, Chakraborty R, Nanda AK (2005a) Investigation of some basic water quality parameters of the North Bengal terai river Kaljani—a tributary of River Torsa, and comparison thereof with the mainstream. J Environ Biol 26:277–286
Bhadra B, Roy P, Chakraborty R (2005b) Serratia ureilytica sp. nov., a novel urea utilizing species. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 55:2155–2158
Brosius J, Palmer ML, Kennedy PJ, Noller HF (1978) Complete nucleotide sequence of a 16S ribosomal rRNA gene from Escherichia coli. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 75:4801–4805
Felsenstein J (1985) Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using bootstrap. Evolution 39:783–791
Friedrich CG, Schneider K, Friedrich B (1982) Nickel is in the catalytically active hydrogenase of Alcaligenes eutrophus. J Bacteriol 152:42–48
Grass G, Große C, Nies DH (2000) Regulation of the cnr cobalt and nickel resistant determinant from Ralstonia sp. Strain CH34. J Bacteriol 182:1390–1398
Grimont F, Grimont PAD (1992) The genus Enterobacter. In: Balows A, Truper HG, Dworkin M, Harder W, Schleifer KH (eds) The prokaryotes, vol 3, 2nd edn. Springer, New York
Hausinger RP (1985) Nickel utilization by microorganisms. Microbiol Rev 51:22–42
Hughes MN, Poole RK (1989) Metals and micro-organism. Chapman & Hall, London, pp 280–285
Kimura M (1980) A simple method for estimating evolutionary rates of base substitutions through comparative studies of nucleotide sequences. J Mol Evol 16:111–120
Kumar S, Tamura K, Nei M (2004) MEGA3.1: integrated software for molecular evolutionary genetics analysis and sequence alignment. Brief Bioinform 5:150–163
Lee YK, Chang HH, Lee HJ, Park H, Lee KH, Joe MH (2006) Isolation of a novel plasmid, pNi15, from Enterobacter sp. Ni15 containing a nickel resistance gene. FEMS Microbiol Lett 257:177–181
Liesegang H, Lemke K, Siddiqui RA, Schlegel HG (1993) Characterization of the inducible nickel and cobalt resistance determinant cnr from pMOL 28 of Alcaligenes eutrophus CH34. J Bacteriol 175:767–778
Mattsby-Baltzer I, Sandin M, Ahiström B, Allemark S, Edebo M, Falsen E, Pedersen K, Rodia N, Thompson RA, Edebo L (1989) Microbial growth and accumulation in industrial metalworking fluids. Appl Environ Microbiol 55:2681–2689
Mergeay M (1991) Towards an understanding of the genetics of bacterial metal resistance. Trends Biotechnol 9:17–24
Mergeay M, Houba C, Gerits J (1978) Extra-chromosomal inheritance controlling resistance to cadmium, cobalt and zinc ions: evidence from curing in a Pseudomonas. Arch Int Physiol Biochim 86:440–441
Mergeay M, Nies D, Schlegel HG, Gerits J, Charles P, Van Gijsegem F (1985) Alcaligenes eutrophus CH34 is a facultative chemolithotroph with plasmid-bound resistance to heavy metals. J Bacteriol 162:328–334
Misra TK (1992) Bacterial resistance to inorganic mercury salts and organomercurials. Plasmid 27:4–16
Nies D H, Mergeay M, Friedrich B, Schlegel HG (1987) Cloning of plasmid genes encoding resistance to cadmium, zinc and cobalt in Alcaligenes eutrophus CH34. J Bacteriol 169:4865–4868
Park JE, Young KE, Schlegel HG, Rhie HG, Lee HS (2003) Conjugative plasmid mediated inducible Nickel resistance in Hafnia alvei 5–5. Int Microbiol 6:57–64
Pickup RW, Mallinson HEH, Rhodes G, Chatfield LK (1997) A novel nickel resistance determinant found in sewage associated bacteria. Microbiol Ecol 25:230–239
Poole RK, Gadd GM (1989) Metals: microbe interactions. IRL Press, Oxford, pp 1–37
Saitou N, Nei M (1987) The neighbor-joining method: a new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Mol Biol Evol 4:406–425
Schmidt T, Schlegel HG (1994) Combined nickel–cobalt–cadmium resistance in Alcaligenes xylosoxidans 31A. J Bacteriol 176:7045–7054
Shiller AM, Boyle E (1985) Dissolved zinc in rivers. Nature, 317:41–52
Stoppel RD, Schlegel HG (1995) Nickel resistant bacteria from anthropogenically nickel polluted and naturally nickel percolated ecosystems. Appl Environ Microbiol 61:2276–2285
Stoppel RD, Mayer M, Schlegel HG (1995) Nickel resistant determinant cloned from the enterobacterium Klebsiella oxytoca: conjugal transfer, expression, regulation and DNA homologies to various nickel resistant bacteria. Biometals 8:70–79
Thompson JD, Gibson TJ, Plewniak F, Jeanmougin F, Higgins DG (1997) The CLUSTAL_X windows interface: flexible strategies for multiple sequence alignment aided by quality analysis tools. Nucleic Acid Res 25:4876–4882
Tibazarwa C, Wuertz S, Mergeay M, Wyns L, Lilie D van der (2000) Regulation of the cnr cobalt and nickel resistant determinant of Ralstonia eutropha (Alcaligenes eutrophus) CH34. J Bacteriol 182:1299–1409
Timotius K, Schlegel HG (1987) Aus Abwässern isolierte Nickel-resistente Bakterien. Nachrichten Akad. Wiss. Gottingen. II. Math Physik KI 3:15–23
Trajanovska S, Brits ML, Bhave M (1997) Detection of heavy metal ion resistance genes in gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria isolated from lead-contaminated site. Biodegradation 8:113–124
Acknowledgments
The research was supported by ‘Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’ under sanction no. 9/285(16)/2001-EMR-I. We also acknowledge the cooperation of the Department of Chemistry, Burdwan University, India, for AAS analysis of samples, and MTCC, Chandigarh, India, for providing biochemical properties of some isolates.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by Jörg Overmann.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bhadra, B., Nanda, A.K. & Chakraborty, R. Fluctuation in recoverable nickel and zinc resistant copiotrophic bacteria explained by the varying zinc ion content of Torsa River in different months. Arch Microbiol 188, 215–224 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0236-7
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0236-7