16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing of Seawater Microbiota from Quintero Bay, Chile, Affected by Oil Spills, Shows the Presence of an Oil-Degrading Marine Bacterial Guild Structured by the Bacterial Genera Alcanivorax, Cobetia, Halomonas, and Oleiphilus.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Ibacache-Quiroga C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6284726 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing of Seawater Microbiota from Quintero Bay, Chile, Affected by Oil Spills, Shows the Presence of an Oil-Degrading Marine Bacterial Guild Structured by the Bacterial Genera <i>Alcanivorax, Cobetia, Halomonas</i>, and <i>Oleiphilus</i>.
Ibacache-Quiroga Claudia C Ojeda Juan J Dinamarca M Alejandro MA
Microbiology resource announcements 20181129 21
The Quintero Bay, located along the central coast of Chile, has suffered different oil spills during the past 5 years, impacting marine ecosystems. This report describes the microbial community structure of seawater samples obtained from the Quintero Bay through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1 was found to tolerate seawater and have a special ability of adhering to an oil-water interface of 10-80 µm emulsified mineral and crude oil droplets. These properties make ADP1 an ideal bacterial chassis for constructing bioreporters that are able to actively search and sense oil spill in water and soils. Acinetobacter baylyi bioreporter ADPWH_alk was developed and applied to the detection of alkanes and alkenes in water, seawater and soils. Bioreporter ADPWH_alk was able to detect a broad range of alkanes and alkenes with carbon chain length from C7 to C36. So far, ADPWH_alk is the only bioreporter that is able to detect alkane with carbon chain length greater than C18. This bioreporter responded to the alkanes in about 30 min and it was independent to the cell growth phase because of two point mutations in alkM promoter recognized by alkane regulatory protein ALKR. ADPWH_alk was applied to detect mineral oil, Brent, Chestnut and Sirri crude oils in water and seawater in the range 0.1-100 mg l(-1), showing that the bioreporter oil detection was semi-quantitative. This study demonstrates that ADPWH_alk is a rapid, sensitive and semi-quantitative bioreporter that can be useful for environmental monitoring and assessment of oil spills in seawater and soils.
| S-EPMC3815275 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Oil spills can lead to irreversible environmental degradation and are a potential hazard to human health. We study how onshore oil spills affect neonatal and infant mortality by combining spatial data from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor with Demographic and Health Surveys. To identify a causal effect, we compare siblings born to the same mother, conceived before and after a nearby oil spill. We find that nearby oil spills that occur before conception increase neonatal mortality by 38.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, which corresponds to an increase of around 100% on the sample mean. The effect is fairly uniform across girls and boys, socio-economic backgrounds, and locations. We show that this effect is not driven by events related to oil production or violent conflict. Rather, our results are consistent with medical and epidemiological evidence showing that exposure to hydrocarbons can pose risks to fetal development. We provide further evidence suggesting that the effects of oil spills on neonatal mortality persist for several years after the occurrence of an oil spill.
| S-EPMC6431154 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The Niger Delta region is the oil producing area of Nigeria, which consists of highly diverse ecosystems that are supportive of numerous species of terrestrial and aquatic fauna and flora. Crude oil spills endanger fish hatcheries in coastal water and also contaminate valuable fish. This study examines the effects of oil spills on fish production in the Niger Delta of Nigeria from 1981-2015 using an estimable Cobb Douglas production function. The findings suggest that oil production and spills negatively affect fish production, while farm labour has a positive effect on fish production. On the other hand, fishery loan exerts a negative effect on fish production and this could be ascribed to the bottlenecks in accessing these loans. This study corroborates the findings in literature on the negative concomitance of oil spills and fish production and suggests a cautious approach to oil exploration activities for a sustainable development in the region.
| S-EPMC6201865 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Marine environments are frequently exposed to oil spills as a result of transportation, oil drilling or fuel usage. Whereas large oil spills and their effects have been widely documented, more common and recurrent small spills typically escape attention. To fill this important gap in the assessment of oil-spill effects, we performed two independent supervised full sea releases of 5?m(3) of crude oil, complemented by on-board mesocosm studies and sampling of accidentally encountered slicks. Using rapid on-board biological assays, we detect high bioavailability and toxicity of dissolved and dispersed oil within 24?h after the spills, occurring fairly deep (8?m) below the slicks. Selective decline of marine plankton is observed, equally relevant for early stages of larger spills. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to common thinking, even small spills have immediate adverse biological effects and their recurrent nature is likely to affect marine ecosystem functioning.
| S-EPMC4822028 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In this work, polyvinyl chloride (PVC)/clay nanofiber composites with various contents were fabricated by the electrospinning process. The morphology, porosity, density, and mechanical properties of the nanofiber mats were investigated. In addition, PVC/clay nanofiber mats were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis. Moreover, the influence of the clay content in the nanofiber mats and its effect on oil sorption capacity were also evaluated. The results show that the clay particle diameter affects the fabrication, morphology, porosity, density, mechanical properties, and sorption capacity of the nanofiber mats. Adding clay in nanofiber composite materials leads to higher porosity and a higher oil sorption capacity. PVC/clay nanofiber mats have a high oil sorption capacity at low temperatures. They exhibit a high potential to be used as materials to eliminate oil spills under arctic conditions.
| S-EPMC8359129 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The use of natural marine bacteria as "oil sensors" for the detection of pollution events can be suggested as a novel way of monitoring oil occurrence at sea. Nucleic acid-based devices generically called genosensors are emerging as potentially promising tools for in situ detection of specific microbial marker genes suited for that purpose. Functional marker genes are particularly interesting as targets for oil-related genosensing but their identification remains a challenge. Here, seawater samples, collected in tanks with oil addition mimicking a realistic oil spill scenario, were filtered and archived by the Environmental Sample Processor (ESP), a fully robotized genosensor, and the samples were then used for post-retrieval metatranscriptomic analysis. After extraction, RNA from ESP-archived samples at start, Day 4 and Day 7 of the experiment was used for sequencing. Metatranscriptomics revealed that several KEGG pathways were significantly enriched in samples exposed to oil. However, these pathways were highly expressed also in the non-oil-exposed water samples, most likely as a result of the release of natural organic matter from decaying phytoplankton. Temporary peaks of aliphatic alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases and monoaromatic ring-degrading enzymes (e.g., ben, box, and dmp clusters) were observed on Day 4 in both control and oil-exposed and non-exposed tanks. Few alkane 1-monooxygenase genes were upregulated on oil, mostly transcribed by families Porticoccaceae and Rhodobacteraceae, together with aromatic ring-hydroxylating dioxygenases, mostly transcribed by Rhodobacteraceae. Few transcripts from obligate hydrocarbonoclastic genera of Alcanivorax, Oleispira and Cycloclasticus were significantly enriched in the oil-treated exposed tank in comparison to control the non-exposed tank, and these were mostly transporters and genes involved in nitrogen and phosphorous acquisition. This study highlights the importance of seasonality, i.e., phytoplankton occurrence and senescence leading to organic compound release which can be used preferentially by bacteria over oil compounds, delaying the latter process. As a result, such seasonal effect can reduce the sensitivity of genosensing tools employing bacterial functional genes to sense oil. A better understanding of the use of natural organic matter by bacteria involved in oil-biodegradation is needed to develop an array of functional markers enabling the rapid and specific in situ detection of anthropogenic pollution.
| S-EPMC7284936 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Pristine marine environments are highly oligotrophic ecosystems populated by well-established specialized microbial communities. Nevertheless, during oil spills, low-abundant hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria bloom and rapidly prevail over the marine microbiota. The genus Alcanivorax is one of the most abundant and well-studied organisms for oil degradation. While highly successful under polluted conditions due to its specialized oil-degrading metabolism, it is unknown how they persist in these environments during pristine conditions. Here, we show that part of the Alcanivorax genus, as well as oils, has an enormous potential for biodegrading aliphatic polyesters thanks to a unique and abundantly secreted alpha/beta hydrolase. The heterologous overexpression of this esterase proved a remarkable ability to hydrolyse both natural and synthetic polyesters. Our findings contribute to (i) better understand the ecology of Alcanivorax in its natural environment, where natural polyesters such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are produced by a large fraction of the community and, hence, an accessible source of carbon and energy used by the organism in order to persist, (ii) highlight the potential of Alcanivorax to clear marine environments from polyester materials of anthropogenic origin as well as oils, and (iii) the discovery of a new versatile esterase with a high biotechnological potential.
| S-EPMC7187450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) was established in 2010 with $500 million in funding provided by British Petroleum over a 10-year period to support research on the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and recovery. Contributions of the GoMRI program to date focused on human health are presented in more than 32 peer-reviewed papers published between 2011 and May 2019. Primary findings from review of these papers are (i) the large quantity of dispersants used in the oil cleanup have been associated with human health concerns, including through obesogenicity, toxicity, and illnesses from aerosolization of the agents; (ii) oil contamination has been associated with potential for increases in harmful algal blooms and numbers of pathogenic Vibrio bacteria in oil-impacted waters; and (iii) members of Gulf communities who are heavily reliant upon natural resources for their livelihoods were found to be vulnerable to high levels of life disruptions and institutional distrust. Positive correlations include a finding that a high level of community attachment was beneficial for recovery. Actions taken to improve disaster response and reduce stress-associated health effects could lessen negative impacts of similar disasters in the future. Furthermore, GoMRI has supported annual conferences beginning in 2013 at which informative human health-related presentations have been made. Based on this review, it is recommended that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 be updated to include enhanced funding for oil spill impacts to human health.
| S-EPMC7038885 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Migratory seabirds face threats from climate change and a variety of anthropogenic disturbances. Although most seabird research has focused on the ecology of individuals at the colony, technological advances now allow researchers to track seabird movements at sea and during migration. We combined telemetry data on Onychoprion fuscatus (sooty terns) with a long-term capture-mark-recapture dataset from the Dry Tortugas National Park to map the movements at sea for this species, calculate estimates of mortality, and investigate the impact of hurricanes on a migratory seabird. Included in the latter analysis is information on the locations of recovered bands from deceased individuals wrecked by tropical storms. We present the first known map of sooty tern migration in the Atlantic Ocean. Our results indicate that the birds had minor overlaps with areas affected by the major 2010 oil spill and a major shrimp fishery. Indices of hurricane strength and occurrence are positively correlated with annual mortality and indices of numbers of wrecked birds. As climate change may lead to an increase in severity and frequency of major hurricanes, this may pose a long-term problem for this colony.
| S-EPMC5428334 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study investigates the risk from oil spills along the main shipping lane in the Red Sea based upon oil spill model trajectories forced by the outputs of validated high resolution regional met-ocean data. Following the intra-annual variations in the met-ocean conditions, the results are presented by classifying the basin into three regions: northern, central and southern Red Sea. The maximum distance traveled by the slick is presented for 1, 2, 5, 10, 14 and 20 days after the commencement of a spill. Different measures of hazard assessment in terms of the concentration of beached oil alongside the corresponding probability maps are also analyzed. The volume fractions of beached, dispersed and evaporated oil, 20 days after the commencement of a spill are quantified. The Red Sea general circulation is characterized by rich mesoscale eddies, which appear to be the most prevailing dynamics in oil transport in the basin. Two case events are analyzed to closely examine the effects of the mesoscale circulations on the fate of spilled oil. The results of this study provide a comprehensive assessment of oil spill hazards in the Red Sea, stemming its main shipping lane and identifies the areas at high risk that require timely mitigation strategies.
| S-EPMC8382762 | biostudies-literature