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Characterization of microbial diversity and community in water flooding oil reservoirs in China

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Abstract

The diversity and distribution of bacterial and archaeal communities in four different water flooding oil reservoirs with different geological properties were investigated using 16S rDNA clone library construction method. Canonical correspondence analysis was used to analyze microbial community clustering and the correlation with environmental factors. The results indicated that the diversity and abundance in the bacterial communities were significantly higher than the archaeal communities, while both of them had high similarity within the communities respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that of compositions of bacterial communities were distinctly different both at phylum and genus level. Proteobacteria dominated in each bacterial community, ranging from 61.35 to 75.83 %, in which α-proteobacteria and γ-proteobacteria were the main groups. In comparison to bacterial communities, the compositions of archaeal communities were similar at phylum level, while varied at genus level, and the dominant population was Methanomicrobia, ranging from 65.91 to 92.74 % in the single oil reservoir. The factor that most significantly influenced the microbial communities in these reservoirs was found to be temperature. Other environmental factors also influenced the microbial communities but not significantly. It is therefore assumed that microbial communities are formed by an accumulated effect of several factors. These results are essential for understanding ecological environment of the water flooding oil reservoirs and providing scientific guidance to the performance of MEOR technology.

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Acknowledgments

We thank technicians in Daqing oil field, Karamay oil field and Huabei oil field for assistance in sample collection. This work was supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2009AA063502) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (50804024).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, People’s Republic of China

    Lingxia Zhao, Ting Ma, Mengli Gao, Peike Gao, Meina Cao, Xudong Zhu & Guoqiang Li

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  1. Lingxia Zhao
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Correspondence to Ting Ma.

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Zhao, L., Ma, T., Gao, M. et al. Characterization of microbial diversity and community in water flooding oil reservoirs in China. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 28, 3039–3052 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-012-1114-2

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