Analysis of Methanogenic Hydrocarbon-Degrading Cultures Established from Oil Sands Tailings, Using 454 FLX Pyrosequencing

Oil sands tailings ponds containing wastes from bitumen extraction often become methanogenic, apparently due to anaerobic biodegradation of the small proportion of hydrocarbon solvent that escapes to the ponds with fine tailings. Laboratory enrichment cultures inoculated with mature fine tailings (MFT) from four tailings ponds revealed that microbes indigenous to MFT degraded a variety of hydrocarbons under methanogenic conditions. As one component of the Hydrocarbon Metagenomics Project, we have used 454 FLX pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons to characterise some of these cultures.