Abstract
Biodegradation in the aquatic environment occurs in the presence of many chemicals, while standard simulation biodegradation tests are conducted with single chemicals. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the presence of additional chemicals on (1) biodegradation kinetics of individual chemicals and (2) the microbial composition in test systems. Parallel mixture and single substance experiments were conducted for 9 chemicals (phenethyl benzoate, oxacycloheptadec-10-en-2-one, α-ionone, methyl 2-naphthyl ether, decan-5-olide, octan-2-one, 2′-acetonaphthanone, methyl N-methylanthranilate, (+)-menthone) using inoculum from a Danish stream. Biotic and abiotic test systems were incubated at 12 °C for 1–30 days. Primary biodegradation kinetics were then determined from biotic/abiotic peak area ratios using SPME GC/MS analysis. The effect of the mixture on biodegradation varied with test chemical and was more pronounced for chemicals with lag-phases above 14 days: two chemicals degraded in the mixture but not when tested alone (i.e., positive mixture effect), and two degraded when tested alone but not in the mixture (i.e., negative mixture effect). Microbial composition (16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing) was highly affected by 14 days incubation and the presence of the mixture (significant carbon source), but less by single chemicals (low carbon source). Growth on chemical mixtures resulted in consistent proliferation of Pseudomonas and Malikia, while specific chemicals increased the abundance of putative degraders belonging to Novosphingobium and Zoogloea. The chemical and microbiological results support (1) that simulation biodegradation kinetics should be determined in mixtures at low environmentally relevant concentrations and (2) that degradation times beyond some weeks are associated with more uncertainty.
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All data generated during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files. Raw sequencing reads are available on GenBank (under BioProject PRJNA746252).
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Global Product Compliance (GPC) for financial support, Roger Van-Egmond for useful comments and input on the manuscripts and Hanne Bøggild for technical assistance in the laboratory.
Funding
This study was funded by the company Global Product Compliance (GPC). The role of the sponsor was to provide a list of chemicals of interest to their industries from which the authors selected test chemicals. The sponsor was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or writing of manuscript.
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Study conception, funding and methodology was performed by HB and PM. HB performed the experiments, wrote the original draft for the manuscript, and prepared the figures. AD contributed to the data interpretation on microbial composition. All authors improved the manuscript through comments and text suggestions and all authors approved the final manuscript.
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Birch, H., Dechesne, A., Knudsmark Sjøholm, K. et al. Biodegradation of chemicals tested in mixtures and individually: mixture effects on biodegradation kinetics and microbial composition. Biodegradation 34, 139–153 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-022-10009-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-022-10009-y