Ecological Interactions Between Metals and Microbes

Analyses of chromium resistant microbes. Culturable xylene-degrading and chromate-resistant microbes were obtained from chronically cocontaminated soil using a microcosm enrichment technique, and shown to correlate to dominant soil populations using culture independent techniques. The soil microbial community proved able to mount a respiratory response to addition of xylene in the presence of chromate. The majority of isolates belonged to the ubiquitous but poorly studied high %G+C Gram positive genus Arthrobacter, and exhibited considerable genotypic and phenotypic variability. Phenotypic assays uncovered a wide variation in the levels of chromate resistance, even between very closely related strains. Primers designed against conserved motifs in the known chrA chromate efflux gene failed to detect similar sequences among the chromate resistant Arthrobacter isolates obtained through enrichment