Microbial diversity in a uranium contaminated environment assessed by culture dependent and independent methodologies: the Urgeiriça mine as a case study

An evaluation of the impact of mining activities in the microbial community structure of a former uranium mine (Urgeiriça, Central Portugal) was performed by a culture dependent and independent approach. Samples of water and sediments were collected from 4 relevant sites in the Urgeiriça mine area. Sample A1 was collected from the water that comes directly from the mine into the water treatment plant. Sample A2 was collected in Poço das Cobras, the water from this sampling site is a mixture from the water pumped from the underground mine and water from acidic mine effluents at the edges of a nearby river. Samples 7A and 7B, were collected directly from the underground mine at surface and at some depth (± 30 cm), respectively. The V1-V3 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene of domains Bacteria and Archaea was amplified and sequenced by synthesis using the pyrosequencing protocols as described previously (Dowd et al., 2008; Callaway et al., 2010).The pyrosequencing runs was performed at the Research and Testing Laboratory Lubbock, TX. U.S.A, using the Roche 454GS-FLX platform.