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Isolation of a bacterial consortium able to degrade the fungicide thiabendazole: the key role of a Sphingomonas phylotype

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Thiabendazole (TBZ) is a fungicide used in fruit-packaging plants. Its application leads to the production of wastewaters requiring detoxification. In the absence of efficient treatment methods, biological depuration of these effluents could be a viable alternative. However, nothing is known regarding the microbial degradation of the recalcitrant and toxic to aquatics TBZ. We report the isolation, via enrichment cultures from a polluted soil, of the first bacterial consortium able to rapidly degrade TBZ and use it as a carbon source. Repeated efforts using various culture-dependent approaches failed to isolate TBZ-degrading bacteria in axenic cultures. Denaturating gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and cloning showed that the consortium was composed of α-, β- and γ-Proteobacteria. Culture-independent methods including antibiotics-driven selection with DNA/RNA-DGGE, q-PCR and stable isotope probing (SIP)-DGGE identified a Sphingomonas phylotype (B13) as the key degrading member. Cross-feeding studies with structurally related chemicals showed that ring substituents of the benzimidazole moiety (thiazole or furan rings) favoured the cleavage of the imidazole moiety. LC-MS/MS analysis verified that TBZ degradation proceeds via cleavage of the imidazole moiety releasing thiazole-4-carboxamidine, which was not further transformed, and the benzoyl moiety, possibly as catechol, which was eventually consumed by the bacterial consortium as suggested by SIP-DGGE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly, Laboratory of Plant and Environmental Biotechnology, Viopolis, 41500, Larissa, Greece

    Chiara Perruchon & Dimitrios G. Karpouzas

  2. Department of Environmental Microbiology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Antonis Chatzinotas

  3. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Antonis Chatzinotas

  4. Agricultural Research Institute of Cyprus, Leukosia, Cyprus

    Michalis Omirou

  5. Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation, Mawson Lakes Campus, University of South Australia, Future Industries Institute, Adelaide, Australia

    Sotirios Vasileiadis

  6. School of Agriculture, Laboratory of Pesticide Science, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Urania Menkissoglou-Spiroudi

Authors
  1. Chiara Perruchon
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  2. Antonis Chatzinotas
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  3. Michalis Omirou
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  4. Sotirios Vasileiadis
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  5. Urania Menkissoglou-Spiroudi
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  6. Dimitrios G. Karpouzas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dimitrios G. Karpouzas.

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Funding information

For parts of this work Dr. C. Perruchon was financially supported by the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece (IKY). This work was financially supported by (i) the research project BIOREMEDIATOMICS implemented under the ARISTEIA II Action of the ‘Operational Programme Education and Lifelong Learning’ and is co-funded by the European Social Fund and National Resources (Grant No. 4718) and (ii) the project ISOPED implemented under the IKY-DAAD 2014 programme of collaboration between Greek-German research groups.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Perruchon, C., Chatzinotas, A., Omirou, M. et al. Isolation of a bacterial consortium able to degrade the fungicide thiabendazole: the key role of a Sphingomonas phylotype. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 3881–3893 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8128-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8128-5

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