Bacterial response to sodium and uranyl nitrate treatments of uranium mining waste samples


Bacterial response to sodium and uranyl nitrate treatments of uranium mining waste samples

Geissler, A.; Reitz, T.; Selenska-Pobell, S.

The response of bacterial community of a depleted uranium mining waste pile to increased concentrations of uranyl or sodium nitrate was studied in microcosm experiments under conditions corresponding to the natural. For this, the 16S rRNA- and the narG-gene retrievals were applied. Both retrievals demonstrated that at the early stages of the treatments with sodium nitrate a strong activation of nitrate reducing and denitrifying populations, mainly of Firmicutes and Betaproteobacteria, occurred that had overgrown the originally predominating in the untreated samples populations of Acidobacteria, Alpha-, and Deltaproteobacteria. The parallel treatments with uranyl nitrate demonstrated that only particular populations of the above mentioned induced Firmicutes and betaproteobacterial nitrate-reducers are uranium resistant. More significant was the stimulation in these samples of the gammaproteobacterial denitrifyers, able also to effectively interact with and to immobilize the added uranium. After longer incubations both kinds of treatments resulted in an establishment of populations characteristic for the original non-treated sample. The latter indicates that particular members of the natural bacterial consortium of the studied uranium waste site possess a high potential to deal with increased and toxic concentrations of uranium and nitrate, which usually co-contaminate these environments. In this way the diversity of the whole community which includes also uranium sensitive populations is kept unaffected. These results explain our previous finding that the bacterial communities of a large variety of uranium mining waste samples collected from the same site but from different depths and polluted with uranium to a different extend, exhibit almost the same structure.

  • Contribution to proceedings
    VAAM-Jahrestagung 2007, 01.-04.04.2007, Osnabrück, Germany
    Biospektrum, Das Magazin für Biowissenschaften, Tagungsband:: Elsevier, 0947-0867
  • Poster
    VAAM-Jahrestagung 2007, 01.-04.04.2007, Osnabrück, Germany

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Publ.-Id: 9237