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Influence of exogenous lead pollution on enzyme activities and organic matter degradation in the surface of river sediment

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Abstract

As lead is one of the most hazardous heavy metals in river ecosystem, the influence of exogenous lead pollution on enzyme activities and organic matter degradation in the surface of river sediment with high moisture content were studied at laboratory scale. The dynamic changes of urease, catalase, protease activities, organic matter content, and exchangeable or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA)-extractable Pb concentration in sediment were monitored during different levels of exogenous lead infiltrating into sediment. At the early stage of incubation, the activities of catalase and protease were inhibited, whereas the urease activities were enhanced with different levels of exogenous lead. Organic matter content in polluted sediment with exogenous lead was lower than control and correlated with enzyme activities. In addition, the effects of lead on the three enzyme activities were strongly time-dependent and catalase activities showed lower significant difference (P < 0.05) than urease and protease. Correlations between catalase activities and EDTA-extractable Pb in the experiment were significantly negative. The present findings will improve the understandings about the ecotoxicological mechanisms in sediment.

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Acknowledgments

The study is financially supported by the Program for the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51039001, 51278176, and 51408206), the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20100161110012), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0186), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (521293050), the Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate (CX2014B141), and the Hunan University Fund for Multidisciplinary Developing (531107040762).

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  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, 410082, China

    Danlian Huang, Juanjuan Xu, Guangming Zeng, Cui Lai, Xingzhong Yuan, Xiangying Luo, Cong Wang, Piao Xu & Chao Huang

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control (Hunan University), Ministry of Education, Changsha, 410082, China

    Danlian Huang, Juanjuan Xu, Guangming Zeng, Cui Lai, Xingzhong Yuan, Xiangying Luo, Cong Wang, Piao Xu & Chao Huang

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  1. Danlian Huang
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Huang, D., Xu, J., Zeng, G. et al. Influence of exogenous lead pollution on enzyme activities and organic matter degradation in the surface of river sediment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 11422–11435 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4375-0

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