The natural capacity for oil degradation of marine environments: towards developing DNA-based biosensors for monitoring low-level oil pollution

石油排入海洋会产生严重的环境后果，随着石油和天然气勘探和开采在越来越深的沃茨进行，深海生态系统受到石油污染影响的威胁越来越大。在2010年的深水地平线石油泄漏事件之后，人们发现食油细菌在墨西哥湾深处大量自然发生，并在泄漏后迅速繁殖。通过分解大量的石油，它们可能在清理石油泄漏方面发挥了重要的作用，但往往被低估。如果这一发现对其他深海区域具有代表性，这将意味着1。深海石油污染物的固有生物补救潜力是存在的，2.食油细菌数量的变化可以作为监测目前存在很大困难的低水平油污染的指标。然而，与墨西哥湾的天然高石油浓度相比，大部分深海缺乏天然存在的石油碳氢化合物，因此，食油细菌的数量和活动可能要低得多。在这项概念验证研究中，我们将调查来自英国大陆架和东北大西洋的样本中食油细菌的丰度，活性和身份以及它们优选降解的石油成分。我们假设，具有分解石油能力的细菌存在于这些环境中，如果石油成为食物，它们就会迅速开始繁殖。如果这一假设得到证实，食油细菌的数量，特别是编码油分解酶的基因，将提供一个理想的工具来监测低水平的油污染，否则很难检测到，我们计划在后续的JIP中收获这一潜力，旨在开发用于监测低水平油污染的基于DNA的生物传感器。

SummaryThe release of oil into the sea can produce significant environmental consequences, and with oil and gas exploration and extraction occurring in increasingly deeper waters, deep-sea ecosystems are under increasing threat from the effects of oil pollution. In the aftermath of the Deepwater horizon oil spill in 2010 it was found that oil eating bacteria occurred naturally in great numbers in the deep Gulf of Mexico and multiplied very quickly after the spill. By breaking down large amounts of oil they may have played an important and often underestimated role in the cleanup of the oil spill. If this finding was representative for other deep-sea areas, this would imply that 1. there exists a potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil contaminants in the deep-sea, and that2. changes in the number of oil-eating bacteria could be used as an indicator to monitor low-level oil pollution which currently presents a great difficulty. However, in contrast to the Gulf of Mexico with its naturally high oil concentrations (= where oil-eating bacteria find food all the time), most of the deep-sea is devoid of naturally occurring petroleum hydrocarbons and in consequence the number and activity of oil eating bacteria may therefore be much lower. In this proof-of-concept study we will investigate the abundance, activity and identity of oil-eating bacteria and the oil components they preferably degrade in samples from the UK continental shelf and NE Atlantic. We hypothesize that bacteria with the capacity to break down oil are present in these environments and quickly start to multiply if oil becomes available for food. If this hypothesis is proven, the number of oil eating bacteria, and in particular the genes encoding the enzymes for oil breakdown, would present an ideal tool to monitor for low-level oil pollution that otherwise is difficult to detect, and we plan to harvest this potential in a follow-on JIP aimed to develop site-specific DNA-based biosensors for monitoring low-level oil pollution.