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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, March 2000, p. 956-965, Vol. 66, No. 3
Department of Microbiology, College of
Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, South
Korea
Received 16 August 1999/Accepted 10 December 1999
Despite intensive studies of microbial-community diversity, the
questions of which kinds of microbial populations are associated with
changes in community diversity have not yet been fully solved by
molecular approaches. In this study, to investigate the impact of
livestock wastewater on changes in the bacterial communities in
groundwater, bacterial communities in subsurface aquifers were analyzed
by characterizing their 16S rDNA sequences. The similarity coefficients
of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns of the
cloned 16S ribosomal DNAs showed that the bacterial communities in
livestock wastewater samples were more closely related to those in
contaminated aquifer samples. In addition, calculations of community
diversity clearly showed that bacterial communities in the livestock
wastewater and the contaminated aquifer were much more diverse than
those in the uncontaminated aquifer. Thus, the increase in
bacterial-community diversity in the contaminated aquifer was assumed
to be due to the infiltration of livestock wastewater, containing high
concentrations of diverse microbial flora, into the aquifer.
Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences from a subset of the RFLP
patterns showed that the Cytophaga-Flexibacter-Bacteroides and low-G+C gram-positive groups originating from livestock wastewater were responsible for the change in the bacterial community in groundwater. This was evidenced by the occurrence of rumen-related sequences not only in the livestock wastewater samples but also in the
contaminated-groundwater samples. Rumen-related sequences, therefore,
can be used as indicator sequences for fecal contamination of
groundwater, particularly from livestock.
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Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Increase in Bacterial Community Diversity in
Subsurface Aquifers Receiving Livestock Wastewater Input
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Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Kwanak-Gu, Seoul 151-742, South Korea. Phone: 82-2-880-6704. Fax: 82-2-889-9474. E-mail: sjkimm{at}plaza.snu.ac.kr.
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