Scientists have uncovered the secret of microbial survival in polluted soil

Russian scientists have uncovered the secret of microbial survival in polluted soil: it turned out to be hidden in the genes and the restructuring of the microbial community. This was reported to Izvestia on March 23 at the Southern Federal University (SFU).

"Some microorganisms are able to remove toxic metals from the cell, while others die and are replaced by other more resistant ones. The object of study was chemozems in the area of the former Lake Sornoye in the floodplain of the Seversky Donets River in the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky district of the Rostov region," the SFU said.

It is noted that from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, this place was a sludge storage facility for wastewater from the Kamenskvolokno chemical plant, which is why the zinc content in the soil in this area turned out to be two thousand times higher than normal. According to Elizaveta Pulikova, a junior researcher at the SFU frontier Laboratory of Rhizosphere Bioengineering, extremely polluted soils represent a unique model for studying the balance of the nitrogen cycle, where nitrification, as an indicator process, should be completely stopped due to heavy metal toxicity, but activity persists.

Nitrification is the process of converting nitrogen in the soil, which is considered an indicator of ecosystem health. Extreme long-term heavy metal pollution should have stopped these processes completely, but life in the soil continued.

To understand this, the scientists applied a set of methods: analysis of the chemical and physical properties of the soil, study of the enzymatic activity of microorganisms, isolation and sequencing of soil DNA, as well as bioinformatic analysis of the data obtained. This made it possible to study in detail the structure of the microbial community and the mechanisms of its adaptation, concluded the SFU.

Infection Wake-up call: Scientists have exposed inactive pathogens in food

How the new technique will improve product quality control

In November last year, scientists from the University of Bremen discovered active microbes in an extremely alkaline environment deep under the ocean, where the pH level (a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of an aqueous solution) reaches 12, indicators at which the existence of life was previously considered impossible. The researchers did not use DNA analysis, but the study of lipid biomarkers, special fat molecules that can be used to judge the vital activity of organisms.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.