Abstract
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are toxic pollutants widely distributed in the environment due to natural and anthropogenic processes. In order to mitigate tar oil contaminations with PAH, research on improving bioremediation approaches, which are sometimes inefficient, is needed. However, the knowledge on the fate of PAH-derived carbon and the microbial degraders in particular in compost-supplemented soils is still limited. Here we show the PAH carbon turnover mass balance in microcosms with soil-compost mixtures or in farmyard fertilized soil using [13C6]-pyrene as a model PAH. Complete pyrene degradation of 100 mg/kg of soil was observed in all supplemented microcosms within 3 to 5 months, and the residual 13C was mainly found as carbon converted to microbial biomass. Long-term fertilization of soil with farmyard manure resulted in pyrene removal efficiency similar to compost addition, although with a much longer lag phase, higher mineralization, and lower carbon incorporation into the biomass. Organic amendments either as long-term manure fertilization or as compost amendment thus play a key role in increasing the PAH-degrading potential of the soil microbial community. Phospholipid fatty acid stable isotope probing (PLFA-SIP) was used to trace the carbon within the microbial population and the amount of biomass formed from pyrene degradation. The results demonstrate that complex microbial degrader consortia rather than the expected single key players are responsible for PAH degradation in organic-amended soil.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the European Union project “Molecular Approaches and MetaGenomic Investigations for optimizing Clean-up of PAH contaminated sites” (MAGICPAH) under FP7-KBBE (245226), within the seventh framework program. The authors wish to thank Kerstin Puschendorf for the TOC analysis as well as Ursula Günther, Falk Bratfisch, and Matthias Gehre of the Department of Isotope Biogeochemistry, UFZ, Germany, for their assistance in the stable isotope measurements. The soil samples for the experiments were kindly provided by Ines Merbach from the UFZ experimental station in Bad Lauchstädt, Germany.
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Adam, I.K.U., Miltner, A. & Kästner, M. Degradation of 13C-labeled pyrene in soil-compost mixtures and fertilized soil. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 9813–9824 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6822-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6822-8