Baker and 5 co-authors reported in the Goldsmidt Conference Abstracts of 2011 that due to widespread organic contamination derived from past industrial processes, microorganisms are becoming ever more important for the maintenance of potable groundwater supplies, as they have the ability to degrade organic contaminants in situ.
A General Updated Example From Talabi and Kayode (2019)
Furthermore, the syntrophic relationships in mixed microbial communities found attached to geological surfaces results in an enhanced capability to degrade elevated levels of organic contaminants, making them integral to the natural bioremediation of contaminants:
[1]. Microbial biodegradation is also a sustainable alternative to costly and invasive engineering-based remediation techniques. However, contaminant toxicity can have a marked influence on microbial community structure and diversity, and
[2] ultimately affecting the in situ biodegradation potential.
The authors investigated the effects of contaminant load on the indigenous microbial communities in a phenol-contaminated aquifer in the UK. Using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and pyrosequencing, groundwater (planktonic) microbial communities were profiled across the contaminant gradient, and compared to the attached communities formed on surrogate geological substrata incubated in the aquifer under the same hydrochemical conditions.
Microbial community structure and function was found to be strongly influenced by contaminant load and groundwater hydrochemistry. Also, in-situ microbial attachment studies reveal that the attached and planktonic communities differ markedly. These results are important for understanding the distribution and formation of microbial communities in contaminated environments and subsurface ecosystems, and lead to a better understanding of
the function and limitations on in situ biodegradation processes in the Earth’s Critical Zone.
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