Análise genômica de microrganismos degradadores de hidrocarbonetos do petróleo e seu potencial de atuação em hidrocarbonetos prioritários

Abstract

Contamination of soils and marine ecosystems by hydrocarbons that constitute petroleum from large and small oil spills throughout its supply chain brings serious consequences to the environment. Among the existing strategies to mitigate environmental impacts in affected areas, bioremediation by bioaugmentation using organisms capable of degrading oil is an alternative that offers a better cost-benefit ratio and promotes greater removal of compounds when compared to physical-chemical methods. National and international environmental regulatory agencies list 179 compounds as priority for bioremediation due to their toxic and/or mutagenic potential. From previous works, the members of the research group of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genomics have been obtaining bacterial isolates from samples of environments contaminated by oil, maintaining a stock of these isolates that compose a bank of microorganisms preserved by the laboratory. The genomes of isolates with promising profile to act in bioremediation are being sequenced, in an attempt to identify their taxonomic and metabolic profile. So far, through the sequencing of the complete genome of 22 bacterial isolates previously obtained by the group and sequencing of the 16S gene of 18 isolates obtained from oil samples collected on beaches on Rio Grande do Norte in the development of this work, resulted in the identification of 10 genera of bacteria able to grow using oil as a carbon source. The analysis of the generated data, using the R programming language, allowed the comparison with their respective reference genomes, determining their relationships and particularities. It was identified among all isolates with complete genome sequenced 53 genes that encode enzymes, present in 20 pathways of degradation and metabolism of xenobiotics from KEGG, which participate in the degradation process of 37 hydrocarbons reported as priority, as well as the similarities of the degradation profile of the isolates. Through in silico analysis, a consortium of 4 isolates was proposed with potential to act in bioremediation of 34 of the 37 compounds.