Biodegradation of naphthenic acid surrogates by axenic cultures

This is the first study to report that bacteria from the genera Ochrobactrum, Brevundimonas and Bacillus can be isolated by growth on naphthenic acids (NAs) extracted from oil sands process water (OSPW). These pure cultures were screened for their ability to use a range of aliphatic, cyclic and aromatic NA surrogates in 96-well microtiter plates using water-soluble tetrazolium redox dyes (Biolog Redox Dye H) as the indicator of metabolic activity. Of the three cultures, Ochrobactrum showed most metabolic activity on the widest range of NA surrogates. Brevundomonas and especially Ochrobactrum had higher metabolic activity on polycyclic aromatic compounds than other classes of NA surrogates. Bacillus also oxidized a wide range of NA surrogates but not as well as Ochrobactrum. Using this method to characterize NA utilisation, one can identify which NAs or NA classes in OSPW are more readily degraded. Since aromatic NAs have been shown to have an estrogenic effect and polycyclic monoaromatic compounds have been suggested to pose the greatest environmental threat among the NAs, these bacterial genera may play an important role in detoxification of OSPW. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that bacteria belonging to the genera Ochrobactrum and Bacillus can also degrade surrogates of tricyclic NAs.