Udotong IR, Uko MP and Udotong JIR
Environmental pollution from Oil & Gas Exploration & Production (O&G E&P) activities remains one of the major problems in the oil-producing communities of Nigeria. This results from improper oily wastes disposal as well as incessant oil spills in the region. The operator’s lack of responsible business practices in wastes management and the over-dependence of the economy on oil and gas earnings, in the most part, exacerbate the problems of environmental pollution. Government's lack of political will power which treats issues on oil pollution with levity and long period of neglect of these polluted sites leave the environment ecologically destabilized. Studies to ascertain the ecological status of remote aviation fuel-contaminated sediment of a lentic ecosystem in Inua Eyet Ikot village, Ibeno, Nigeria, have been carried out using conventional microbiological culture-dependent methods. This methodology is known to reveal only <1% of the microbial diversity present. These results were therefore considered inaccurate and grossly misleading. In this present study, sediment samples from this lentic ecosystem in Ibeno, Nigeria previously polluted by Aviation fuel in 2001 (about 14 years ago) were collected and analyzed to assess its prokaryotic diversity using both the conventional culture-dependent as well as culture-independent (16S metagenomic) techniques involving community DNA extraction, DNA sequencing and bioinformatics analyses. The culture-dependent techniques revealed the presence of only six genera of bacteria and no archaea was detected. The 16S metagenomic methods revealed that the sediment of the polluted lentic ecosystem harbors a much more diverse population of bacteria and archaea. These results corroborate the ‘great plate count anomaly’ principle and demonstrate that the use of 16S metagenomic tools will redefine the actual ecological status of the environment.
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