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Community dynamics of anaerobic bacteria in deep petroleum reservoirs

Nature Geoscience volume 1, pages 588–591 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The nature, activity and metabolism of microbes that inhabit the deep subsurface environment are a matter of ongoing debate1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Primarily limited by temperature8, little is known about secondary factors that restrict or enhance microbial activity9,10 or about the extent of a habitable environment deep below the surface. In particular, the degraders of chemically inert organic substrates remain elusive9. Petroleum reservoirs can be regarded as natural bioreactors and are ideally suited for the study of microbial metabolism in the deep subsurface. Here we analyse series of oil samples that were biodegraded to different degrees. We find fatty acids after hydrolysis of purified crude oil fractions, indicating the presence of intact phospholipids and suggesting that indigenous bacteria inhabit petroleum reservoirs in sediment depths of up to 2,000 m. A major change in bacterial community structure occurs after the removal of n-alkanes, indicating that more than one consortium is responsible for petroleum degradation11. Our results suggest that further study of petroleum fluids will help understand bacterial metabolism and diversity in this habitat of the deep subsurface.

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Figure 1: Microbial community changes during progressive petroleum degradation.
Figure 2: Bacterial PLFA in crude oils.
Figure 3: Compositional alteration of oil during progressive biodegradation.

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Acknowledgements

P. Greenwood is thanked for discussions on methods. O. Paech, H. Cieszynski, G. Wiesenberg, B. Stapper, E. Lehndorff, N. Juraschek, and L. Luhrenberg are thanked for discussions. This research was supported by the University of Cologne, a Curtin University International Research Tuition Scholarship and PhD stipend award (C.H.), a travel scholarship from the European Association of Organic Geochemists (C.H.) and a grant-in-aid from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (C.H.). K.G. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council for a QEII fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Cologne, Zuelpicher Strasse 49a, 50674 Cologne, Germany

    Christian Hallmann & Lorenz Schwark

  2. Western Australia Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre, The Institute for Geoscience Research, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia 6845, GPO Box U1987, Australia

    Christian Hallmann & Kliti Grice

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  1. Christian Hallmann
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  2. Lorenz Schwark
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Contributions

C.H. and K.G. designed experiments. C.H. carried out experiments. C.H. and L.S. interpreted results. C.H. wrote the paper. L.S. provided samples and analytical facilities.

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Correspondence to Christian Hallmann.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary figures S1-S4 and table S1 (PDF 1269 kb)

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Hallmann, C., Schwark, L. & Grice, K. Community dynamics of anaerobic bacteria in deep petroleum reservoirs. Nature Geosci 1, 588–591 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo260

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