A suite of recombinant luminescent bacterial strains for the quantification of bioavailable heavy metals and toxicity testing

• Main Authors: Kahru Anne, Rõlova Taisia, Ivask Angela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2009-05-01
• Series: BMC Biotechnology
• Online Access: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6750/9/41

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recombinant whole-cell sensors have already proven useful in the assessment of the bioavailability of environmental pollutants like heavy metals and organic compounds. In this work 19 recombinant bacterial strains representing various Gram-positive (<it>Staphylococcus aureus </it>and <it>Bacillus subtilis</it>) and Gram-negative (<it>Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescens</it>) bacteria were constructed to express the luminescence encoding genes <it>luxCDABE </it>(from <it>Photorhabdus luminescens</it>) as a response to bioavailable heavy metals ("lights-on" metal sensors containing metal-response elements, 13 strains) or in a constitutive manner ("lights-off" constructs, 6 strains).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The bioluminescence of all 13 "lights-on" metal sensor strains was expressed as a function of the sub-toxic metal concentrations enabling the quantitative determination of metals bioavailable for these strains. Five sensor strains, constructed for detecting copper and mercury, proved to be target metal specific, whereas eight other sensor strains were simultaneously induced by Cd²⁺, Hg²⁺, Zn²⁺and Pb²⁺. The lowest limits of determination of the "lights-on" sensor strains for the metals tested in this study were (μg l^-1): 0.002 of CH₃HgCl, 0.03 of HgCl₂, 1.8 of CdCl₂, 33 of Pb(NO₃)₂, 1626 of ZnSO₄, 24 of CuSO₄and 340 of AgNO₃. In general, the sensitivity of the "lights-on" sensor strains was mostly dependent on the metal-response element used while the selection of host bacterium played a relatively minor role. In contrast, toxicity of metals to the "lights-off" strains was only dependent on the bacterial host so that Gram-positive strains were remarkably more sensitive than Gram-negative ones.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The constructed battery of 19 recombinant luminescent bacterial strains exhibits several novel aspects as it contains i) metal sensor strains with similar metal-response elements in different host bacteria; ii) metal sensor strains with metal-response elements in different copies and iii) a "lights-off" construct (control) for every constructed recombinant metal sensor strain. To our knowledge, no Gram-positive metal sensor expressing a full bacterial bioluminescence cassette (<it>luxCDABE</it>) has been constructed previously.</p>