Interaction mechanisms of bacterial strains isolated from extreme habitats with uranium

This paper summarizes the effect of pH on the speciation and cellular localization of uranium bound by bacterial strains isolated from the S15 deep-well montoring site, located at the Siberian radioactive subsurface depository Tomsk-7, Russia. Microbiological methods in combination with extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) were applied. EXAFS analysis showed that the cells of the two isolates, Microbacterium oxydans S15-M2 and Sphingomonas sp. S15-S1, precipitate U(VI) as m-autunite-like phase at pH 4.5, probably due to the release of inorganic phosphate from the cells as result of the microbial metabolism. However, at pH 2 uranium formed complexes with organically bound phosphates of the cell surface. The results of the EXAFS studies corroborate those found using TEM and EDX analysis. Different hypothesis explaining the different coordination chemistry of uranium to bacteria as a function of pH of uranium solution in terms of solubility of m-autunite and/or microbial activity will be discussed.