Skip to main content
Advertisement
  • Other Publications
    • EMBO Press
    • EMBO reports (Home)
    • The EMBO Journal
    • EMBO Molecular Medicine
    • Molecular Systems Biology
    • Life Science Alliance
Login

   

Search

Advanced Search

Journal

  • Home
  • Latest Online
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Subject Collections
  • Review Series & Focuses

Authors & Referees

  • Submit
  • Author Guidelines
  • Aims & Scope
  • Editors & Board
  • Transparent Process
  • Bibliometrics
  • Referee Guidelines
  • Open Access

Info

  • E-Mail Editorial Office
  • Alerts
  • RSS Feeds
  • Subscriptions & Access
  • Reprints & Permissions
  • Advertise & Sponsor
  • Media Partners
  • News & Press
  • Recommend to Librarian
  • Customer Service
  • Home
  • Latest Online

Science & Society

Self‐healing capacity of deep‐sea ecosystems affected by petroleum hydrocarbons

Understanding microbial oil degradation at hydrocarbon seeps is key to sustainable bioremediation protocols
Alberto Scoma, Michail M Yakimov, Daniele Daffonchio, Nico Boon
DOI 10.15252/embr.201744090 | Published online 17.05.2017
EMBO reports (2017) e201744090
Alberto Scoma
Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), Ghent University (UGent), Gent, BelgiumCenter for Geomicrobiology, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Michail M Yakimov
Institute for Coastal Marine Environment (IAMC), National Council of Research (CNR), Messina, ItalyImmanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Daniele Daffonchio
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nico Boon
Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), Ghent University (UGent), Gent, Belgium
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site

Author Affiliations

  1. Alberto Scoma (alberto.scoma{at}ugent.be) (alberto.scoma{at}bios.au.dk)1,2,
  2. Michail M Yakimov3,4,
  3. Daniele Daffonchio5 and
  4. Nico Boon1
  1. 1Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), Ghent University (UGent), Gent, Belgium
  2. 2Center for Geomicrobiology, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  3. 3Institute for Coastal Marine Environment (IAMC), National Council of Research (CNR), Messina, Italy
  4. 4Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia
  5. 5Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
View Abstract
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Transparent Process
Loading

Crude oil or petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid that was formed in geological sediments from organic material under high hydrostatic pressure (HP). It has enormous economic importance as the basis for fuels, plastics, and a huge range of chemicals; the global economy consumes about 30 billion barrels of oil, or 4.8 cubic kilometers, each year. Much of this annual production comes from offshore oilfields and/or is shipped across the world, which poses a considerable risk of accidents and oil spills that contaminate the marine environment. The Exxon Valdez (1989), Prestige (2002), or Deepwater Horizon (DWH) offshore platform (2010) disasters affected huge areas of the oceans and adjacent shores with devastating impact on the fauna and flora.

There is therefore huge interest in technologies to clean up spilled oil at shores and in the deep seas. This in turn has triggered interest in natural biodegradation processes by microorganisms that are able to break down oil and thereby remove it from the environment. These oil‐consuming archaea and bacteria thrive around natural marine hydrocarbon seepages, such as the spectacular hydrothermal black smokers or the cold hydrocarbon seeps that were first discovered in the Gulf of Mexico and in subduction zones of the Pacific Ocean [1]. Recent research showed that these hydrocarbon springs at depths of 200–3,500 m below surface level (bsl) fuel fantastic and highly diverse deep‐sea ecosystems, spanning from asphalt and oil seeps, hypersaline lakes, and gas chimneys, to mud volcanoes and pockmarks.

Natural oil spills and oil weathering

The amount of oil that is naturally entering the oceans at these sites is estimated to be more than 700 million liters per year [2]. In contrast, anthropogenic oil spills into marine environments are estimated to amount to more than 120 million liters per year [2]. The main causes are routine operations—drilling, …

View Full Text

Subscribers, please sign in with your username and password.

Log in using your username and password

Enter your EMBO Reports username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
Forgot your user name or password?

Log in through your institution

You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.
If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.

Pay Per Article - You may access this article (from the computer you are currently using) for 1 day for US$35.00

Regain Access - You can regain access to a recent Pay per Article purchase if your access period has not yet expired.

EMBO Members please login here to access the journals

Subscribe to the Journal

EMBO Journal

EMBO Reports

Recommend to your Librarian

EMBO Journal

EMBO Reports

 

 

Next Article in this Issue
Back to top

  • PDF
  • Share
  • Export
  • Print
Loading

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
In this Issue
Volume 19, Issue 4
01 April 2018 | pp -
EMBO reports: 19 (4)
About the cover
Alert me when this article is cited
Alert me if a correction is posted

Article

  • Article
    • Natural oil spills and oil weathering
    • Human interventions to deal with oil spills
    • Microbial oil degraders at surface and shallow waters, and in sediments
    • The impact of spilled oil on the deep‐sea environment
    • Natural, deep‐sea hydrocarbon emissions define specialized microbial communities
    • Conflict of interest
    • Acknowledgements
    • References
  • Figures & Data
  • Transparent Process

Related Content

More Science & Society

  • Improving animal research reporting standards
    Nikki Osborne, Marc T Avey, Lida Anestidou, Merel Ritskes‐Hoitinga, Gilly Griffin
    EMBO reports : e46069
  • Science, politics and ideologies
    Philip Hunter
    EMBO reports : e46130
  • Synthetic gene drive: between continuity and novelty
    Samson Simon, Mathias Otto, Margret Engelhard
    EMBO reports : e45760
More Science & Society

Related Articles

Cited By...

Request Permissions

Subject Areas

  • Ecology
  • S&S: Ecosystems & Environment
  • S&S: Technology

Journal

  • Latest Online
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Bibliometrics
  • E-Mail Editorial Office

Authors & References

  • Aims & Scope
  • Editors & Board
  • Transparent Process
  • Author Guidelines
  • Referee Guidelines
  • Open Access
  • Submit

Info

  • Alerts
  • RSS Feeds
  • Subscriptions & Access
  • Reprints & Permissions
  • Advertise & Sponsor
  • News & Press
  • Recommend to Librarian
  • Customer Service

EMBO

  • Funding & Awards
  • Events
  • Science Policy
  • Members
  • About EMBO

Online ISSN  1469-3178

Copyright© 2018 EMBO

This website is best viewed using the latest versions of all modern web browsers. Older browsers may not display correctly.