Bioaugmentation of copper polluted soil microcosms with Amycolatopsis

ALBARRACÍN, V.H; AMOROSO, M.J.; ABATE, C. M.

CHEMOSPHERE

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: New York; Año: 2010 p. 131 - 137

0045-6535

Amycolatopsis tucumanensis DSM 45259, the strain of a recently recognized novel species of the genusAmycolatopsis with remarkable copper resistance, was used to bioaugment soil microcosms experimen-tally polluted with copper and for studying the ability of this strain to effectively diminish phytoavailablecopper from soils. Our results demonstrated that A. tucumanensis was capable of profusely colonizingboth, copper polluted and non-polluted soil. Copper bioimmobilization ability of A. tucumanensis on soiwas assessed measuring the bioavailable copper in the soil solution extracted from polluted soil by usingchemical and physical methods and, in this way, 31% lower amounts of the metal were found in soil solu-tion as compared to non-bioaugmented soil. The results obtained when using Zea mays as bioindicatorcorrelated well with the values obtained by the chemical and physical procedures: 20% and 17% lowertissue contents of copper were measured in roots and leaves, respectively. These data confirmed the effi-ciency of the bioremediation process using A. tucumanensis and at the same time proved that chemicalphysical and biological methods for assessing copper bioavailability in soils were correlated. These resultssuggest a potential use of this strain at large scale in copper soil bioremediation strategies. To our knowl-edge, this work is the first to apply and to probe the colonization ability of an Amycolatopsis strain in soimicrocosms and constitutes the first application of an Amycolatopsis strain on bioremediation of pollutedsoils.