Abstract
INTRODUCTION: The Caspian Sea is the world's largest landlocked saline lake which lies between Europe and Asia. This region is particularly known for its large-scale oil reserves, pipelines, and drilling activities, which have contributed to the environmental decline of this lake. In addition to pollution from the petroleum industry, drainage from various river basins brings an influx of residential, industrial, and agricultural effluents that induce eutrophication and hypoxic conditions in deeper, colder waters, creating an oxygen gradient. The temperature and oxygen stratification in this environment has presented a unique opportunity to investigate the potential of the biodegradative processes carried out by the indigenous microbial community. We believe these indigenous microbes possess different metabolic capabilities to degrade oil as they adapted to declining oxygen concentrations and temperatures with increasing depths over a prolonged period. Hence, community structure and composition will vary with depth. METHODS: Microcosms were set up to observe the indigenous microbial reaction after a 60 ppm native crude oil amendment over 115 days. Surface water microcosms were incubated at 28ºC and aerated while deep water microcosms were incubated at 8ºC under anaerobic conditions. These two environmental conditions represent the temperature and oxygen extremes along the gradient and were selected as we try to simulate the indigenous community's response to this oil contamination. DNA was extracted and amplified from these microcosms and sequenced. Bioinformatic analysis was performed to track changes in the abundance of taxa present and biodiversity over different time points to show the progression of community structure. RESULTS: All microcosms showed the presence of hydrocarbon-degrading phyla, whose presence is consistent with other reports from oil-enriched environments. However, distinct communities were observed in oxic versus hypoxic microcosms. CONCLUSION: Orders of Bacteria related to sulfate and nitrogen cycling were found in hypoxic microcosms, indicating a possible mechanism for the anaerobic biodegradation of crude oil. GC-MS analysis of initial and final microcosms also provided evidence of degradation of hydrocarbon fractions in both warm, oxic and cold, hypoxic conditions.