Microbial functional genes enriched in the Xiangjiang River sediments with heavy metal contamination

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Min Gan¹  Xueduan Liu¹  Jianyu Zhu¹  Shiqi Jie¹  Mingming Li¹  Huaqun Yin² 

[1] School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Key Laboratory of Biometallurgy of Ministry of Education, Central South University, 410083, Changsha, China;School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Key Laboratory of Biometallurgy of Ministry of Education, Central South University, 410083, Changsha, China;Department of Botany and Microbiology, Institute for Environmental Genomics, University of Oklahoma, 73019, Norman, OK, USA;

关键词: GeoChip;    Microbial functional gene;    Heavy metal contamination;    Metal resistance;    Xiangjiang river;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12866-016-0800-x

 received in 2015-11-23, accepted in 2016-08-04,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundXiangjiang River (Hunan, China) has been contaminated with heavy metal for several decades by surrounding factories. However, little is known about the influence of a gradient of heavy metal contamination on the diversity, structure of microbial functional gene in sediment. To deeply understand the impact of heavy metal contamination on microbial community, a comprehensive functional gene array (GeoChip 5.0) has been used to study the functional genes structure, composition, diversity and metabolic potential of microbial community from three heavy metal polluted sites of Xiangjiang River.ResultsA total of 25595 functional genes involved in different biogeochemical processes have been detected in three sites, and different diversities and structures of microbial functional genes were observed. The analysis of gene overlapping, unique genes, and various diversity indices indicated a significant correlation between the level of heavy metal contamination and the functional diversity. Plentiful resistant genes related to various metal were detected, such as copper, arsenic, chromium and mercury. The results indicated a significantly higher abundance of genes involved in metal resistance including sulfate reduction genes (dsr) in studied site with most serious heavy metal contamination, such as cueo, mer, metc, merb, tehb and terc gene. With regard to the relationship between the environmental variables and microbial functional structure, S, Cu, Cd, Hg and Cr were the dominating factor shaping the microbial distribution pattern in three sites.ConclusionsThis study suggests that high level of heavy metal contamination resulted in higher functional diversity and the abundance of metal resistant genes. These variation therefore significantly contribute to the resistance, resilience and stability of the microbial community subjected to the gradient of heavy metals contaminant in Xiangjiang River.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2016