Astanin A.I. 1
Alekseev A.Y. 2
Adamenko L.S. 1
Naumova N.B. 2
Zagrebelny S.N. 1
1 Novosibirsk State University
2 Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry
Petroleum contamination of the environment has become quite global over the past decades. Recently contamination with mineral oil hydrocarbons has become increasingly pronounced. These petroleum hydrocarbons, being not xenobiotic or toxic substances, nevertheless present serious environmental threat due to their increasingly diverse and massive use. To find and isolate microbes capable of metabolizing petroleum hydrocarbons we sampled lake sediments (sapropel) from the freshwater lake ecosystem in the south of West Siberia (Russia). By means of laboratory culturing in liquid medium enriched with mineral oil as a sole carbon source for microbial utilization we isolated from this sapropel a microbial consortium efficiently metabolizing mineral oil. This consortium may be used for bioremediation of water ecosystems, contaminated with petroleum products.