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Bacterial Diversity in Bentonites, Engineered Barrier for Deep Geological Disposal of Radioactive Wastes

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

The long-term disposal of radioactive wastes in a deep geological repository is the accepted international solution for the treatment and management of these special residues. The microbial community of the selected host rocks and engineered barriers for the deep geological repository may affect the performance and the safety of the radioactive waste disposal. In this work, the bacterial population of bentonite formations of Almeria (Spain), selected as a reference material for bentonite-engineered barriers in the disposal of radioactive wastes, was studied. 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene-based approaches were used to study the bacterial community of the bentonite samples by traditional clone libraries and Illumina sequencing. Using both techniques, the bacterial diversity analysis revealed similar results, with phylotypes belonging to 14 different bacterial phyla: Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Armatimonadetes, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Cyanobacteria, Deinococcus-Thermus, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, Proteobacteria, Nitrospirae, Verrucomicrobia and an unknown phylum. The dominant groups of the community were represented by Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. A high diversity was found in three of the studied samples. However, two samples were less diverse and dominated by Betaproteobacteria.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the ERDF-cofinanced Grants CGL2012-36505 (80 % finding by FEDER) and CGL2009-09760 (70 % finding by FEDER) as well as BES-2010-032098 and EEBB-2011-43985 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain). We acknowledge the assistance of F. Javier Huertas-Puerta (Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, CSIC–University of Granada, Spain) with the XRD analyses; of Jose Antonio Rodriguez-Liebana (Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, CSIC, Granada, Spain) with the TOC content determination; of Monika Dudek and Katrin Flemming (HZDR, Germany) with the clone libraries sequencing; of Gert Bernhard (HZDR, Germany) for his support; and of Iris Plumeier (HZI, Germany) with the Illumina sequencing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Margarita Lopez-Fernandez, Ivan Sanchez-Castro & Mohamed L. Merroun

  2. Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Institute of Resource Ecology, Bautzner Landstrasse 400, 01328, Dresden, Germany

    Andrea Cherkouk

  3. Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Ramiro Vilchez-Vargas & Nico Boon

  4. Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, Germany

    Ruy Jauregui & Dietmar Pieper

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  1. Margarita Lopez-Fernandez
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Lopez-Fernandez, M., Cherkouk, A., Vilchez-Vargas, R. et al. Bacterial Diversity in Bentonites, Engineered Barrier for Deep Geological Disposal of Radioactive Wastes. Microb Ecol 70, 922–935 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0630-7

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