Influence of ciprofloxacin on the microbial catabolic diversity in soil

Abstract

In this study, the effect of ciprofloxacin (CIP) on the catabolic diversity of soil microbial communities was evaluated. Soil samples were spiked with ciprofloxacin (0, 1, 5 and 50 mgċkg⁻¹) and were incubated for 1, 3, 9, 22 and 40 days. Untreated controls received only water. The functional diversity of the microbial community studied was characterized using a catabolic response profile (CRP). Six substrate groups were tested: carbohydrates, amino acids, carboxylic acids, aromatic chemicals, alcohols and polymers. After 40 days, the CIP concentrations in the soil samples ranged from 25% to 58% of the initial concentrations. Soil respiratory responses to the individual substrates D-glucose, lactose, D-mannose, L-glutamic, Na-citrate, malic acid and inosine were inhibited at the high CIP concentrations (5 and 50 mg·kg⁻¹) in the soils and were increased at the lowest CIP concentration (1 mg·kg⁻¹). Soil respiration was inhibited at all of the CIP concentrations after the addition of D-galactose and glycerol. The CIP concentration and incubation time explained 45.3% of the variance of the catabolic responses. The CRP analysis clearly discriminated among the different CIP concentrations. The results suggest that CIP strongly affects the catabolic diversities of soil microbial communities and that its effect is more significant than that of incubation time.

Keywords:

• Ciprofloxacin
• catabolic response profile
• soil microbial community
• diversity
• concentration
• incubation time

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KZCX2-EW-QN606), the National Key Basic Research Program of China (No. 2010CB428804-2) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40771215). We thank Pei Leng and Lei Sun for their assistance with the sample collection and Yanjie Liu for the data analysis.