PLFA Profiling of Microbial Community Structure Influencing Ecosystem Restoration in Chronosequence Iron Mine Overburden Spoil

Abstract

Phospholipid fatty acid analysis (culture-independent approach) provides a set of molecular markers for microbial taxa and consistently used to discriminate microbial communities of different origin and land uses. PLFA profiling provides an approach for microbial community assessment and their changes regulating ecosystem restoration. PLFAs are synthesized during microbial growth, rapidly degraded following cell death and hence can reliably reflect living microbial communities involved in ecosystem structure and function. Relative distribution of 75 PLFAs across the sites revealed significant differences in microbial community structure in seven different iron mine overburden spoil with variation in Shannon diversity index from 2. .888, p0.001). Based on the relative distribution of PLFAs, the principal component analysis and cluster analysis can able to discriminate different mine overburdens into independent clusters. Redundancy analysis can contribute for soil quality assessment based on the shift in 75 PLFAs. Thus, PLFA profiling evaluated the broad scale patterns of distribution of microbial community structure influencing soil quality and can be used for monitoring the restoration of iron mine spoil over time.