The greater roles of indigenous microorganisms in removing nitrobenzene from sediment compared with the exogenous Phragmites australis and strain JS45

Highlights

Nitrobenzene degraded rapidly and was removed completely in native sediments.

Indigenous microorganisms in native sediments are abundant.

Proteobacteria and Firmicutes might play important roles in nitrobenzene removal.

P. australis could provide a more suitable environment for Thauera.

Abstract

The feasibility of using Phragmites australis-JS45 system in removing nitrobenzene from sediments was conducted. However, it was observed that nitrobenzene degraded rapidly and was removed completely within 20 days in native sediments, raising the possibility that indigenous microorganisms may play important roles in nitrobenzene degradation. Consequently, this study aimed to verify this possibility and investigate the potential nitrobenzene degraders among indigenous microorganisms in sediments. The abundance of inoculated strain JS45 and indigenous bacteria in sediments was quantified using real-time polymerase chain reaction. Furthermore, community structure of the indigenous bacteria was analyzed through high throughput sequencing based on Illumina MiSeq platform. The results showed that indigenous bacteria in native sediments were abundant, approximately 10¹⁴ CFU/g dry weight, which is about six orders of magnitude higher than that in fertile soils. In addition, the levels of indigenous Proteobacteria (Acinetobacter, Comamonadaceae_uncultured, Pseudomonas, and Thauera) and Firmicutes (Clostridium, Sporacetigenium, Fusibacter, Youngiibacter, and Trichococcus) increased significantly during nitrobenzene removal. Their quantities sharply decreased after nitrobenzene was removed completely, except for Pseudomonas and Thauera. Based on the results, it can be concluded that indigenous microorganisms including Proteobacteria and Firmicutes can have great potential for removing nitrobenzene from sediments. Although P. australis - JS45 system was set up in an attempt to eliminate nitrobenzene from sediments, and the system did not meet the expectation. The findings still provide valuable information on enhancing nitrobenzene removal by optimizing the sediment conditions for better growth of indigenous Proteobacteria and Firmicutes.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Community structure / Indigenous microorganisms / Nitrobenzene / Plant-microbe associated remediation / Sediment

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51408593 and 51578538); The National Key Research and Development Program of China （2016YFC0503601）; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013M531769), and Major projects of science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province (2015C32011). We thank Professor Ningyi Zhou for his help in the nitrobenzene detection by HPLC. We thank Mr. James Wang from United States Environmental Protection Agency for his great help in polishing the English writing of this manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest and financial disclosures.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11783-018-1016-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

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