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Simultaneous removal of aliphatic and aromatic crude oil hydrocarbons by Pantoea agglomerans isolated from petroleum-contaminated soil in the west of Iran

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Abstract

Hydrocarbons are considered as one of the most common and harmful environmental pollutants affecting human health and the environment. Bioremediation as an environmentally friendly, highly efficient, and cost-effective method in remediating oil-contaminated environments has been interesting in recent decades. In this study, hydrocarbon degrader bacterial strains were isolated from the highly petroleum-contaminated soils in the Dehloran oil field in the west of Iran. Out of 37 isolates, 15 can grow on M9 agar medium that contains 1.5 g L−1 of crude oil as the sole carbon source. The morphological, biochemical, and 16SrRNA sequencing analyses were performed for the isolates. The choosing of the isolates as the hydrocarbon degrader was examined by evaluating the efficacy of their crude oil removal at a concentration of 10 g L−1 in an aqueous medium. The results showed that five isolates belonging to Pseudomonas sp., Pseudomonas oryzihabitans, Roseomonas aestuarii, Pantoea agglomerans, and Arthrobacter sp. had a hyper hydrocarbon-degrading activity and they could remove more than 85% of the total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) after 96 h. The highest TPH removal of about 95.75% and biodegradation rate of 0.0997 g L−1 h−1 was observed for P. agglomerans. The gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC–MS) analysis was performed during the biodegradation process by P. agglomerans to detect the degradation intermediates and final products. The results confirmed the presence of intermediates such as alcohols and fatty acids in the terminal oxidation pathway of alkanes in this biodegradation process. A promising P. agglomerans NB391 strain can remove aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons simultaneously.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

NA:

Nutrient agar

CFU:

Colony forming unit

C/N:

Carbon/nitrogen

TPH:

Total petroleum hydrocarbon

GC–MS:

Gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy

dS/m:

Decisiemens per meter

SARA:

Saturate, aromatic, resin and asphaltene (SARA) fractions

PIA:

Petroleum industry act

FID:

Flame-ionization detection

BLAST:

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Protection, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Saman Hosseini & Rouhallah Sharifi

  2. Faculty of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Alireza Habibi

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  1. Saman Hosseini
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  2. Rouhallah Sharifi
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  3. Alireza Habibi
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Contributions

SH: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, software, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing; RS: conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing; AH: methodology, writing—review and editing; and all authors approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Rouhallah Sharifi.

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Communicated by Yusuf Akhter.

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Hosseini, S., Sharifi, R. & Habibi, A. Simultaneous removal of aliphatic and aromatic crude oil hydrocarbons by Pantoea agglomerans isolated from petroleum-contaminated soil in the west of Iran. Arch Microbiol 206, 98 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-023-03819-y

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