Shilajit Barua

and 4 more

Groundwater contamination with geogenic arsenic poses a major health risk to millions of people throughout the world. Among various group of microbes, dissimilatory arsenate reducing bacteria (DARB) are considered to be primarily responsible for arsenic mobilization in anaerobic environments of deep underground aquifer sediments. This group of microbes carries out enzyme catalyzed conversion of more immobilized and less toxic arsenate [As (V)] to more soluble and more toxic arsenite [As (III)]. Aquifers are deep subsurface layers of rocks, sand or soil capable of storing and transmitting water. These are potential environments for arsenic mobilization by anaerobic dissimilatory arsenate reducing bacteria (DARB). Study of these bacteria has been restricted to culture based microcosm studies, which suffers from several drawbacks like inappropriate simulation of ecological factors, exclusion of unculturable members, inappropriate elucidation of community behavior etc. With the recent advent of culture independent molecular analysis, more wholesome analysis of microbial community in diverse ecological habitats has become possible. Anaerobic dissimilatory As(V) reduction is catalyzed by the periplasmic arsenate respiratory reductase (Arr) complex, which consists of a large catalytic subunit (ArrA) and a small subunit (ArrB). arrA gene encoding large subunit of the reductase can be used as a reliable marker for arsenate respiration. Our study is a preliminary attempt to isolate community DNA from aquifer sediments collected from various depths and study the differential distribution of arrA in community genome at various depths. We had successfully isolated humic contaminant free community DNA from aquifer sediments and subjected them to PCR amplification with arrA gene specific primers. The amplicons obtained from community DNA of various depths were subsequently sublected to RFLP analysis by HaeIII and the restriction patterns was compared. The study revealed differential distribution of arrA containing DARB population at various depths of aquifer sediments.