title: Correlating microbial community profiles with geochemical conditions in a watershed heavily contaminated by an antimony tailing pond.
abstract: Mining activities have introduced various pollutants to surrounding aquatic and terrestrial environments, causing adverse impacts to the environment. Indigenous microbial communities are responsible for the biogeochemical cycling of pollutants in diverse environments, indicating the potential for bioremediation of such pollutants. Antimony (Sb) has been extensively mined in China and Sb contamination in mining areas has been frequently encountered. To date, however, the microbial composition and structure in response to Sb contamination has remained overlooked. Sb and As frequently co-occur in sulfide-rich ores, and co-contamination of Sb and As is observed in some mining areas. We characterized, for the first time, the microbial community profiles and their responses to Sb and As pollution from a watershed heavily contaminated by Sb tailing pond in Southwest China. The indigenous microbial communities were profiled by high-throughput sequencing from 16 sediment samples (535,390 valid reads). The comprehensive geochemical data (specifically, physical-chemical properties and different Sb and As extraction fractions) were obtained from river water and sediments at different depths as well. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that a suite of in situ geochemical and physical factors significantly structured the overall microbial community compositions. Further, we found significant correlations between individual phylotypes (bacterial genera) and the geochemical fractions of Sb and As by Spearman rank correlation. A number of taxonomic groups were positively correlated with the Sb and As extractable fractions and various Sb and As species in sediment, suggesting potential roles of these phylotypes in Sb biogeochemical cycling.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Enzong
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
authors.forename: Valdis
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Krumins
authors.affiliation: School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon S7N5B3, Canada.
authors.forename: Song
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, China; Innovation Center and Key Laboratory of Waters Safety & Protection in the Pearl River Delta, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China. Electronic address: xiaotangfu@vip.gyig.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Tangfu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, China.
authors.forename: Zengping
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ning
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Institute of Eco-environment and Soil Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China; Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. Electronic address: swm@envsci.rutgers.edu.
authors.forename: Weimin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D000965:Antimony / Q000032:analysis*; D001151:Arsenic / Q000032:analysis*; D002681:China; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000382:microbiology*; D059013:Microbial Consortia; D008906:Mining; D045483:Rivers / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000382:microbiology*; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; D000965:Antimony; D001151:Arsenic
keywords: Antimony and arsenic co-contamination; High-throughput sequencing; Microbial community; Mine tailings