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Influence of bicarbonate, sulfate, and electron donors on biological reduction of uranium and microbial community composition

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Abstract

A microcosm study was performed to investigate the effect of ethanol and acetate on uranium(VI) biological reduction and microbial community changes under various geochemical conditions. Each microcosm contained an uranium-contaminated sediment (up to 2.8 g U/kg) suspended in buffer with bicarbonate at concentrations of either 1 or 40 mM and sulfate at either 1.1 or 3.2 mM. Ethanol or acetate was used as an electron donor. Results indicate that ethanol yielded in significantly higher U(VI) reduction rates than acetate. A low bicarbonate concentration (1 mM) was favored for U(VI) bioreduction to occur in sediments, but high concentrations of bicarbonate (40 mM) and sulfate (3.2 mM) decreased the reduction rates of U(VI). Microbial communities were dominated by species from the Geothrix genus and Proteobacteria phylum in all microcosms. However, species in the Geobacteraceae family capable of reducing U(VI) were significantly enriched by ethanol and acetate in low-bicarbonate buffer. Ethanol increased the population of unclassified Desulfuromonales, while acetate increased the population of Desulfovibrio. Additionally, species in the Geobacteraceae family were not enriched in high-bicarbonate buffer, but the Geothrix and the unclassified Betaproteobacteria species were enriched. This study concludes that ethanol could be a better electron donor than acetate for reducing U(VI) under given experimental conditions, and electron donor and groundwater geochemistry alter microbial communities responsible for U(VI) reduction.

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Acknowledgments

Research partially support by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research (BER) programs. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for US DOE under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831, USA

    Wensui Luo & Tingfen Yan

  2. Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831, USA

    Wensui Luo, Philip M. Jardine & Baohua Gu

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Wei-Min Wu & Craig S. Criddle

  4. Department of Botany and Microbiology, Institute for Environmental Genomics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Jizhong Zhou

Authors
  1. Wensui Luo
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  2. Wei-Min Wu
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  3. Tingfen Yan
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  4. Craig S. Criddle
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  5. Philip M. Jardine
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  6. Jizhong Zhou
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  7. Baohua Gu
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Correspondence to Baohua Gu.

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Luo, W., Wu, WM., Yan, T. et al. Influence of bicarbonate, sulfate, and electron donors on biological reduction of uranium and microbial community composition. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 77, 713–721 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-007-1183-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-007-1183-6

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