Interactions of Paenibacillus sp. JG-TB8 and Sulfolobus acidocaldarius with U(VI): spectroscopic and microscopic studies.

In this work, a combination of wet chemistry, spectroscopic and microscopic techniques was used to investigate and compare the interactions of uranium(VI) with one representative each of the domains Bacteria and Archaea. The bacterial strain Paenibacillus sp. JG-TB8 was isolated from a microbial consortium cultured from a uranium mining waste pile near the town of Johanngeorgenstadt, Germany. This consortium consisted not only of bacteria of the division Firmicutes but also of mesophilic 1.1b-Crenarchaeota. Because isolation approaches of these archaeal strains failed until now, the thermophilic relative Sulfolobus acidocaldius, which has already been found in comparable soil samples, was used for this study.
The U(VI) sorption studies showed that the cells of both microbial strains accumulated significant amounts of uranium.X-ray absorption spectroscopy was used to characterize, at molecular scale, the local coordination of uranium associated with the cells of the studied microorganisms. XANES analysis showed that in both cases the oxidation state of the U(VI) added to the cells was unchanged indicating that U(VI) was not reduced. The EXAFS spectrum of the U(VI) complexes formed by the cells of Paenibacillus sp. JG-TB8 showed a high similarity to that of meta-autunite, indicating that this radionuclide is precipitated by the cells as a meta-autunite-like phase. These uranium precipitates were located at the cell surface and intracellularly as needle-like fibrils as was demonstrated by transmission electron microscope analyses. In the case of Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, EXAFS analysis showed that the structural parameters of the uranium complexes formed by this archaeon are similar to those arising from the complexation of uranium with organic phosphate compounds such as fructose 6-phosphate.