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Abundance, Activity, and Diversity of Archaeal and Bacterial Communities in Both Uncontaminated and Highly Copper-Contaminated Marine Sediments

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Abstract

We analyzed the impact of copper mine tailing discharges on benthic Archaea and Bacteria around the city of Chanaral in northern Chile. Quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) showed that the bacteria dominated the prokaryotic community at both sites, but only the bacteria showed a decrease in abundance in the copper-contaminated site. Q-PCR on reverse transcripts indicated a higher activity of both bacterial and archaeal communities in the contaminated site, suggesting an adaptation of the two communities to copper. This hypothesis was reinforced by the concomitant augmentation of the copper-resistant copA gene coding for a P-type ATP-ase pump in the contaminated site. The metabolically active bacterial community of the contaminated site was dominated by Gammaproteobacteria related to Ectothiorhodospiraceae and Chromatiaceae and by Alphaproteobacteria phylum related to Rhodobacteraceae. The metabolically active archaeal community was dominated by one lineage belonging to unclassified Euryarchaeota and to methanogenic Archaea.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the International ECOS program (no. C06B05) and the ECCO French research program “Misechicui”. We thank Dylis Moscato for the help in the language editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculté des Sciences, CNRS UMR 6143-M2C, Groupe de Microbiologie, Université de Rouen, Place Emile Blondel, 76821, Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, France

    Ludovic Besaury

  2. UMR CNRS 7621, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Microbienne LOMIC, Banyuls-sur-Mer, France

    Jean-François Ghiglione

  3. Laboratoire Universitaire MEBE “Microbiologie Environnementale et Biologie Evolutive”, Université de Rouen, 76821, Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, France

    Ludovic Besaury & Laurent Quillet

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  1. Ludovic Besaury
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  2. Jean-François Ghiglione
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Correspondence to Ludovic Besaury.

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Besaury, L., Ghiglione, JF. & Quillet, L. Abundance, Activity, and Diversity of Archaeal and Bacterial Communities in Both Uncontaminated and Highly Copper-Contaminated Marine Sediments. Mar Biotechnol 16, 230–242 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-013-9542-z

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