Alcanivorax borkumensis Help

[Ama100]

I am doing a project with oil eating bacteria and its effectiveness. I need to know the limitations of the bacterium Alcanivorax borkumensis. Is it a pathogen? Can it thrive in freshwater?

[deleted-132180]

Hello there,

I did a little bit of research on this bacterium, and even though MicrobeWiki mentioned that it has been found in fresh water, I have yet to find a primary source that shows that the bacterium was directly isolated from fresh water. In fact, all of the research articles I've taken a look at so far only mentioned that they've been isolated from marine and coastal environments from around the world. I've attached one of the review articles to this post, and if you take a look at the section titled "Biogeography of OHCB", they talk a little about places that Alcanivorax species have been isolated. I actually think it's quite interesting that no primary literature has mentioned anything about fresh water. This can either mean one of two things: (1) People have actually tried looking in fresh water and haven't found the bacterium in there, but negative results are typically not reported and so we cannot find any articles about the existence of this bacterium in fresh water, OR (2) People have focused solely on seawater since that's where this organism was first isolated and didn't bother to look in fresh water yet. I personally think this may be an interesting direction you can take for your project. Perhaps you and the mentor with whom you're working can go collect samples from fresh water and try to isolate Alcanivorax borkumensis. Another interesting point that research articles I've read mentioned was that the bacterium is typically present at low numbers in unpolluted environments, but quickly become the dominant species in oil-polluted waters. It may also be worth it to take a portion of your samples and treat it with oil, and then assess whether you can see an increase in the numbers of Alcanivorax within the oil-treated samples compared to the untreated samples. Another option would be to contact some of the scientists that are known to do work on this bacterium via e-mail and ask them whether these bacteria have ever been isolated from fresh water samples before.

Also, in regards to whether Alcanivorax is a pathogen or not, so far all reports on this bacterium are about its isolation from marine waters and how it degrades oils. There have been no reports on the bacterium being a pathogen, and since vendors that provide this strain label it as a Biosafety Level 1 organism, it is most probably not harmful to humans, but of course, this is something you should confirm with the vendors when you do purchase the strain.

Hope this helped. Let us know if you have anymore questions!

Best,
Connie