Molecular Biology Lab, Department of Science and Languages, Federal Institute of Minas Gerais - Bambuí Campus, Bambuí, Minas Gerais State, Brazil.
Federal Institute of Minas Gerais-Formiga Campus, Formiga, Minas Gerais State, Brazil.
Ecotoxicology. 2022 Jan;31(1):134-148. doi: 10.1007/s10646-021-02494-3. Epub 2021 Nov 8.
Events of soil contamination by heavy metals are mostly related to human activities that release these metals into the environment as emissions or effluents. Among the industrial activities related to heavy metal pollution, cement production plants are considered one of the most common sources. In this work we applied the High-throughput sequencing approach called 16 S rDNA metabarcoding to perform the taxonomic characterization of the prokaryotic communities of the soil surrounding three cement plants as well as two areas outside the influence of the cement plants that represented agricultural production environments free of heavy metal contamination (control areas). We applied the environmental genomics approaches known as "structural community metrics" (α- and β-diversity metrics) and "functional community metrics" (PICRUSt2 approach) to verify whether or not the effects of heavy metal contamination in the study area generated impacts on soil bacterial communities. We found that the impact related to the elevation of heavy metal concentration due to the operation of cement plants in the surrounding soil can be considered smooth according to globally recognized indices such as Igeo. However, we identified that both the taxonomic and functional structures of the communities surrounding cement plants were different from those found in the control areas. We consider that our findings contribute significantly to the general understanding of the effects of heavy metals on the soil ecosystem by showing that light contamination can disturb the dynamics of ecosystem services provided by soil, specifically those associated with microbial metabolism.
土壤重金属污染事件主要与人类活动有关，这些活动将这些金属作为排放物或废水释放到环境中。在与重金属污染相关的工业活动中，水泥厂被认为是最常见的污染源之一。在这项工作中，我们应用了高通量测序方法 16S rDNA 代谢组学，对三个水泥厂周围土壤的原核微生物群落进行了分类学特征描述，以及两个远离水泥厂影响的区域，这些区域代表了没有重金属污染的农业生产环境（对照区）。我们应用了环境基因组学方法，称为“结构群落度量”（α-和β-多样性度量）和“功能群落度量”（PICRUSt2 方法），以验证研究区域重金属污染的影响是否对土壤细菌群落产生了影响。我们发现，由于水泥厂的运营导致周围土壤中重金属浓度升高的影响，可以根据全球公认的指标（如 Igeo）被认为是平缓的。然而，我们发现水泥厂周围的群落的分类和功能结构与对照区的群落不同。我们认为，我们的研究结果通过表明轻度污染会干扰土壤生态系统提供的生态系统服务的动态，特别是与微生物代谢相关的服务，对重金属对土壤生态系统的影响有了更全面的理解，这具有重要意义。
