(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2007) Barua, Sutapa; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brent M. Peyton
Coeur d'Alene River (CDAR) in northern Idaho is one of the metal contaminated rivers in US. The sediments of the river are enriched with As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn which are toxic metals to humans and animals. It is hypothesized that microorganisms living in this river sediment can remove the metals and thus detoxify their environment. The objective of this work is to investigate the microbial communities existing in CDAR sediment using 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing and 16S rRNA gene microarray (PhyloChip) analysis. According to our phylogenetic analysis, the CDAR clones fell into 13 distinct phylogenetic classes including 2 environmental samples, 1 uncultured bacterium, and an unclassified Chloroflexi. The major representative genera found were Thiobacillus (7 of 91), Azoarcus (7/91), Acidobacterium (6/91), Burkholderia (5/91), Flavobacterium (5/91) and Janthinobacterium (5/91). PhyloChip data showed the presence of 1551 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). 97% of the clone library sequences matched at various taxonomic levels with the microarray results.
