AUTHOR=Scoma Alberto , Yakimov Michail M. , Boon Nico 

TITLE=Challenging Oil Bioremediation at Deep-Sea Hydrostatic Pressure

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2016

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01203

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2016.01203

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident has brought oil contamination of deep-sea environments to worldwide attention. The risk for new deep-sea spills is not expected to decrease in the future, as political pressure mounts to access deep-water fossil reserves, and poorly tested technologies are used to access oil. This also applies to the response to oil-contamination events, with bioremediation the only (bio)technology presently available to combat deep-sea spills. Many questions about the fate of petroleum-hydrocarbons at deep-sea remain unanswered, as much as the main constraints limiting bioremediation under increased hydrostatic pressures and low temperatures. The microbial pathways fueling oil take up are unclear, and the mild upregulation observed for beta-oxidation-related genes in both water and sediments contrasts with the high amount of alkanes present in the spilled-oil. The fate of solid alkanes (tar) and that of hydrocarbons degradation rates was largely overlooked, as the reason why the most predominant hydrocarbonoclastic genera were not enriched at deep-sea, despite being present at hydrocarbon seeps at the Gulf of Mexico. This mini-review aims at highlighting the missing information in the field, proposing a holistic approach where in situ and ex situ studies are integrated to reveal the principal mechanisms accounting for deep-sea oil bioremediation.