Screening of bacteria isolated from Arctic atmospheric aerosols for oil degradation ability

Currently, a significant part of the world's soil cover is exposed to negative pollution, leading to its degradation. Oil hydrocarbons play a significant role among numerous soil pollutants. Sources of pollution are enterprises of oil extraction, oil refining, oil and oil products transportation. Every year in the world millions of tons of oil and oil products are lost during extraction, transportation, storage and use. Biological remediation based on the potential of microorganisms to transform pollutants of different origin is the most promising and environmentally safe method of restoring soil fertility, so the search for new strains to create and improve such biological preparations is still relevant. Atmospheric aerosols are a source of both transient and endogenous microbiota, which are metabolically active in relation to pollutants. During a complex airborne expedition on atmospheric sounding over the Arctic Ocean seas samples of aerosols were collected for microbiological analysis. The isolated cultures of microorganisms belonging to the genera Bacillus, Acinetobacter, Rhodococcus were tested for the ability to oil destruction when growing on agarized and liquid medium with the addition of oil to 2% as the only source of carbon and incubation for 10 days. The bioemulsifying and biodegrading abilities of microorganisms during growth in liquid medium were estimated visually by destruction of the surface film of oil, turbidity of the nutrient medium due to an increase in the biomass of microorganisms, formation of a uniform emulsion of oil in the medium, microscopy of cultural suspensions, and by their seeding on agarized nutrient medium to determine the titer of viable cells. Highly effective mesophilic and psychrotolerant oil destructor bacteria were isolated from northern atmospheric aerosols, which can be used to create complex biopreparations capable of assimilating a wider range of oil hydrocarbons for remediation of polluted soils and grounds in cold territories of Siberia and the Arctic.