Indigenous microbial communities in heavy oil show a threshold response to salinity.

ABSTRACT: Microbial degradation influences the quality of oil resources. The environmental factors that shape the composition of oil microbial communities are largely unknown because most samples from oil fields are impacted by anthropogenic oil production, perturbing the native ecosystem with exogenous fluids and microorganisms. We investigated the relationship between formation water geochemistry and microbial community composition in undisturbed oil samples. We isolated 43 microliter-sized water droplets naturally enclosed in the heavy oil of the Pitch Lake, Trinidad and Tobago. The water chemistry and microbial community composition within the same water droplet were determined by ion chromatography and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, respectively. The results revealed a high variability in i

SUBMITTER: Voskuhl L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8684454 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature