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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2000, p. 49-53, Vol. 66, No. 1
0099-2240/0/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Establishment of a Polychlorinated Biphenyl-Dechlorinating Microbial Consortium, Specific for Doubly Flanked Chlorines, in a Defined, Sediment-Free Medium

Qingzhong Wu,1 Kevin R. Sowers,2 and Harold D. May1,*

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina,1 and Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore, Maryland2

Received 28 June 1999/Accepted 22 October 1999

Estuarine sediment from Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, was used as inoculum for the development of an anaerobic enrichment culture that specifically dechlorinates doubly flanked chlorines (i.e., chlorines bound to carbon that are flanked on both sides by other chlorine-carbon bonds) of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Dechlorination was restricted to the para chlorine in cultures enriched with 10 mM fumarate, 50 ppm (173 µM) 2,3,4,5-tetrachlorobiphenyl, and no sediment. Initially the rate of dechlorination decreased upon the removal of sediment from the medium. However, the dechlorinating activity was sustainable, and following sequential transfer in a defined, sediment-free estuarine medium, the activity increased to levels near that observed with sediment. The culture was nonmethanogenic, and molybdate, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, neomycin, and streptomycin inhibited dechlorination activity; bromoethanesulfonate and vancomycin did not. Addition of 17 PCB congeners indicated that the culture specifically removes double flanked chlorines, preferably in the para position, and does not attack ortho chlorines. This is the first microbial consortium shown to para or meta dechlorinate a PCB congener in a defined sediment-free medium. It is the second PCB-dechlorinating enrichment culture to be sustained in the absence of sediment, but its dechlorinating capabilities are entirely different from those of the other sediment-free PCB-dechlorinating culture, an ortho-dechlorinating consortium, and do not match any previously published Aroclor-dechlorinating patterns.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, 173 Ashley Ave., 225 BSB, P.O. Box 250504, Charleston, SC 29425-2230. Phone: (843) 792-7140. Fax: (843) 792-2464. E-mail: MAYH{at}MUSC.EDU.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2000, p. 49-53, Vol. 66, No. 1
0099-2240/0/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


This article has been cited by other articles:

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