Structure and taxonomic and functional diversity of the microbial community associated to environments contaminated with creosote using culture independent and dependent approaches

There is a growing search for the development of cost-effective and sustainable technologies for the decontamination of environments highly polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Bioremediation has these qualities and can be successfully used for this purpose, but requires the knowledge of the diversity and catabolic potential of the local indigenous microbiota and an understanding of the changes in these communities in response to stress. In this study, a metataxonomic approach was used to describe the bacterial community of groundwater monitoring wells with different levels of creosote contamination from a creosote-contaminated aquifer, located at an old railway sleepers treatment and maintenance station (TMS) and to access the potential for in situ bioremediation of these sites by microbial biostimulation.