ECOFUNCTIONAL ENZYMES OF MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES IN-GROUND WATER

Biolog(TM) technology was initially developed as a rapid, broad spectr um method for the biochemical identification of clinical microorganism s. Demand and creative application of this technology has resulted in the development of Biolog(TM) plates for Gram-negative and Gram-positi ve bacteria, for yeast and Lactobacillus sp. Microbial ecologists have extended the use of these plates from the identification of pure cult ure isolates to a tool for quantifying the metabolic patterns of mixed cultures, consortia and entire microbial communities. Patterns that d evelop on Biolog(TM) microplates are a result of the oxidation of the substrates by microorganisms in the inoculum and the subsequent reduct ion of the tetrazolium dye to form a color in response to detectable r eactions. Depending upon the functional enzymes present in the isolate or community one of a possible 4 x 10(28) patterns can be expressed. The patterns were used to distinguish the physiological ecology of var ious microbial communities present in remediated groundwater. The data indicate that one can observe differences in the microbial community among treatments of bioventing, 1% and 4% methane injection, and pulse injection of air, methane and nutrients both between and among wells. The investigation indicates that Biolog(TM) technology is a useful pa rameter to measure the physiological response of the microbial communi ty to perturbation and allows one to design enhancement techniques to further the degradation of selected recalcitrant and toxic chemicals. Further it allows one to evaluate the recovery of the microbial subsur face ecosystem after the perturbations have ceased. We propose the ter m 'ecofunctional enzymes' (EFE) as the most descriptive and useful ter m for the Biolog(TM) plate patterns generated by microbial communities . We offer this designation and provide ecological application in an a ttempt to standardize the terminology for this relatively new and uniq ue technology.