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16S rRNA and As-Related Functional Diversity: Contrasting Fingerprints in Arsenic-Rich Sediments from an Acid Mine Drainage

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

To gain an in-depth insight into the diversity and the distribution of genes under the particular evolutionary pressure of an arsenic-rich acid mine drainage (AMD), the genes involved in bacterial arsenic detoxification (arsB, ACR3) and arsenite oxidation (aioA) were investigated in sediment from Carnoulès (France), in parallel to the diversity and global distribution of the metabolically active bacteria. The metabolically active bacteria were affiliated mainly to AMD specialists, i.e., organisms detected in or isolated from AMDs throughout the world. They included mainly Acidobacteria and the non-affiliated “Candidatus Fodinabacter communificans,” as well as Thiomonas and Acidithiobacillus spp., Actinobacteria, and unclassified Gammaproteobacteria. The distribution range of these organisms suggested that they show niche conservatism. Sixteen types of deduced protein sequences of arsenite transporters (5 ArsB and 11 Acr3p) were detected, whereas a single type of arsenite oxidase (AioA) was found. Our data suggested that at Carnoulès, the aioA gene was more recent than those encoding arsenite transporters and subjected to a different molecular evolution. In contrast to the 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) genes associated with AMD environments worldwide, the functional genes aioA, ACR3, and to a lesser extent arsB, were either novel or specific to Carnoulès, raising the question as to whether these functional genes are specific to high concentrations of arsenic, AMD-specific, or site-specific.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Aquitaine Regional Government Council (France) and the ANR (RARE project no. 07-BLAN-0108). L.G. was partly supported by a doctoral grant from the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (France).

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Author notes

  1. Ludovic Giloteaux

    Present address: Department of Microbiology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Équipe Environnement et Microbiologie, EEM, UMR 5254 (IPREM, CNRS), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, IBEAS, BP 1155, 64013, Pau Cedex, France

    Anne Fahy, Ludovic Giloteaux, Robert Duran & Béatrice Lauga

  2. Génétique Moléculaire, Génomique et Microbiologie, UMR CNRS 7156, Université de Strasbourg, 28 rue Goethe, 67000, Strasbourg, France

    Philippe Bertin

  3. Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Institut de Génomique, Genoscope, Évry, France

    Denis Le Paslier & Jean Weissenbach

  4. CNRS-UMR 8030, Évry, France

    Denis Le Paslier, Claudine Médigue & Jean Weissenbach

  5. UEVE, Université d’Évry, Évry, France

    Denis Le Paslier, Claudine Médigue & Jean Weissenbach

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Fahy, A., Giloteaux, L., Bertin, P. et al. 16S rRNA and As-Related Functional Diversity: Contrasting Fingerprints in Arsenic-Rich Sediments from an Acid Mine Drainage. Microb Ecol 70, 154–167 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-014-0558-3

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