Co-acclimation of bacterial communities under stresses of hydrocarbons with different structures

Crude oil is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons with different structures; its components vary in bioavailability and toxicity. It is important to understand how bacterial communities response to different hydrocarbons and their co-acclimation in the process of degradation. In this study, microcosms with the addition of structurally different hydrocarbons were setup to investigate the successions of bacterial communities and the interactions between different bacterial taxa. Hydrocarbons were effectively degraded in all microcosms after 40 days. High-throughput sequencing offered a great quantity of data for analyzing successions of bacterial communities. The results indicated that the bacterial communities responded dramatically different to various hydrocarbons. KEGG database and PICRUSt were applied to predict functions of individual bacterial taxa and networks were constructed to analyze co-acclimations between functional bacterial groups. Almost all functional genes catalyzing degradation of different hydrocarbons were predicted in bacterial communities. Most of bacterial taxa were believed to conduct biodegradation processes via interactions with each other. This study addressed a few investigated area of bacterial community responses to structurally different organic pollutants and their co-acclimation and interactions in the process of biodegradation. The study could provide useful information to guide the bioremediation of crude oil pollution.