https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-019-10271-w Phenol accounts for a large proportion of the contamination in industrial wastewater discharged from chemical plants due to its wide use as a raw chemical. Residual phenol waste in water and soil significantly endangers Acinetobacter radioresistens human health and the natural environment. In this study, an strain, APH1, was isolated and identified for its efficient capability of utilizing phenol as sole carbon source for growth. A draft genome sequence containing 3,290,330 bases with 45 contigs was obtained, and 22 genes were found to be involved in phenol metabolism and 51 putative drug-resistance genes were annotated by genomic analysis. The optimal conditions for cell culture and phenol removal were determined to be 30 °C, pH 6.0, and a phenol concentration of 500 mg/L; the upper limit of phenol tolerance was 950 mg/L. Based on GC-MS analysis, the key metabolites including cis,cis-muconic acid, catechol, and succinic acid were detected. During bioremediation experiment using 450 mg/kg (dry weight) of phenol-contaminated soil, the strain APH1 removed 99% of the phenol within 3 days. According to microbial diversity analysis, the microbial abundance Chungangia, Bacillus, Nitrospira, Lysinibacillus, Planomicrobium of and increased after the addition of phenol. Furthermore, at day 23, the abundance of strain APH1 was greatly reduced, and the microbial diversity and structure of the whole microbial community were gradually recovered, indicating that strain APH1 would not affect this microbial ecosystem. These findings provide insights into the bioremediation of soil contaminated with phenol.

Liu, Y., Ye, Q., Huang, W.-L., Feng, L., Wang, Y.-H., Xie, Z., Yong, S.-S., Zhang, S., Jiang, B., Zheng, Y., Wang, J.-J., 2020. Spectroscopic and molecular-level characteristics of dissolved organic matter in the Pearl River Estuary, South China. Science of The Total Environment 710, 136307.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971936303X Coastal populations are expanding globally, resulting in great anthropogenic impacts on the organic matter in estuaries and regional carbon cycles. However, the molecular-level characteristics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) within highly disturbed estuaries are still not well understood. Here, water samples collected during two seasons (wet and dry) from the subtropical Pearl River Estuary of China were analyzed using absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) to determine the spatiotemporal variations in the DOMcharacteristics. In the seaward direction, the abundances of chromophoric and fluorescent DOM decreased by greater percentages than the bulk dissolved organic carbon concentration. The spectroscopy and FT-ICR MS analyses collectively indicated seaward declines in the aromaticity of DOM and terrestrial DOM contributions from natural terrestrial markers and anthropogenic synthetic surfactants. In particular, the S content in DOMwas much higher here than in previously reported estuaries, suggesting a strong anthropogenic impact on the estuarine DOM. Greater terrestrial and anthropogenic signatures in DOM were observed in the wet season than in the dry season. Importantly, this study implies that the terrestrial and anthropogenic contributions to DOM were strongly driven by season in the anthropogenically disturbed subtropical estuary.

Liu, Z., Horton, D.E., Tabor, C., Sageman, B.B., Percival, L.M.E., Gill, B.C., Selby, D., 2019. Assessing the contributions of comet impact and volcanism toward the climate perturbations of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Geophysical Research Letters 46, 14798-14806.

https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084818 Abstract: The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is marked by a prominent negative carbon-isotope excursion, reflecting the injection of thousands of gigatons of isotopically light carbon into the atmosphere. The sources of the isotopically light carbon remain poorly constrained. Utilizing a multiproxy geochemical analysis (osmium isotopes, mercury, sulfur, and platinum group elements) of two Paleocene-Eocene boundary records, we present evidence that a comet impact and major volcanic activity likely contributed to the environmental perturbations during the Paleocene-Eocene interval. Additionally, Earth system model simulations indicate that stratospheric sulfate aerosols, commensurate with the impact magnitude, were likely to have caused transient cooling and reduced precipitation.