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A genomic island provides Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 additional copper resistance: a possible competitive advantage

  • Applied genetics and molecular biotechnology
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Abstract

There is great interest in understanding how extremophilic biomining bacteria adapt to exceptionally high copper concentrations in their environment. Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 genome possesses the same copper resistance determinants as strain ATCC 23270. However, the former strain contains in its genome a 160-kb genomic island (GI), which is absent in ATCC 23270. This GI contains, amongst other genes, several genes coding for an additional putative copper ATPase and a Cus system. A. ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 showed a much higher resistance to CuSO4 (>100 mM) than that of strain ATCC 23270 (<25 mM). When a similar number of bacteria from each strain were mixed and allowed to grow in the absence of copper, their respective final numbers remained approximately equal. However, in the presence of copper, there was a clear overgrowth of strain ATCC 53993 compared to ATCC 23270. This behavior is most likely explained by the presence of the additional copper-resistance genes in the GI of strain ATCC 53993. As determined by qRT-PCR, it was demonstrated that these genes are upregulated when A. ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 is grown in the presence of copper and were shown to be functional when expressed in copper-sensitive Escherichia coli mutants. Thus, the reason for resistance to copper of two strains of the same acidophilic microorganism could be determined by slight differences in their genomes, which may not only lead to changes in their capacities to adapt to their environment, but may also help to select the more fit microorganisms for industrial biomining operations.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grant FONDECYT 1110214 and in part by ICM P-05-001-F project. We thank M. Handford and A. Hooker for proofreading the manuscript and helpful comments. We also thank TIGR for the use of their complete A. ferrooxidans ATCC 23270 genome sequence (www.tigr.org/db.shtml), as well as the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/) for the A. ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 genome sequence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Department of Biology, and Millennium Institute for Cell Dynamics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Luis H. Orellana & Carlos A. Jerez

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  1. Luis H. Orellana
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  2. Carlos A. Jerez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlos A. Jerez.

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Supplementary Table 1

Oligonucleotides used in this work (DOC 50 kb) (DOC 38 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Effect of copper on the relative abundance of A. ferrooxidans strains in a mixed culture (DOC 29 kb)

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Orellana, L.H., Jerez, C.A. A genomic island provides Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 53993 additional copper resistance: a possible competitive advantage. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 92, 761–767 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3494-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3494-x

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