Organochlorine pesticides are ubiquitous group of recalcitrant molecules that accumulate in food chains and have

inherent toxic effects and adverse health effects. To circumvent the problem, microbial communities are found to

be promising candidates for degrading the organochlorine pesticide’s and removal of residues. In this study, a novel

microbial consortium isolated from Yamuna and Godavari rivers capable of simultaneous biodegradation of organo-

chlorine pesticides (DDT and Lindane) was subjected to metagenomic sequencing. This consortia used was enriched

by progressively increasing concentrations of Lindane and DDT (organochlorine pesticides) for months till a stable

Lindane and DDT tolerant population was established, and found to be degrading mixture of organochlorine pes-

ticides with concentrations up to 30 ppm of DDT and Lindane. Currently, in the realm of our knowledge very few

metagenomic analysis were carried out to characterize the consortia and understand the biodiversity of microbial

ARTICLE INFORMATION:

Saghee Madhu Raju and Rajkumar Bidlan

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were excessively used

globally for pest control and agricultural purposes and

public health control (Aktar et al., 2009). OCPs are

slowly and accumulate through food chains (Amrita

et al., 2007) and produce a signi cant magni cation at

in drinking and bottled water (Mutiyar et al., 2011). It

is highly essential and vital to remove these pollutants

from the environment, from the sinks primarily water

and soil ecosystems to  nally eliminate their residues.

Microorganisms are found to be potential degraders

of organochlorine compounds, notably water and soil

vobacterium and Micrococcus were found to be effective

bio-degraders (Ka lzadeh et al., 2014 Eric et al 2017).

capable of simultaneous degradation of organochlorine

pesticides (Bidlan, 2003). The taxonomic distribution

and biodiversity among the microbial consortium was

established that comprised of interacting microbial pop-

ulations (Oulas A et al., 2015 Eric et al., 2017 ).

Lindane -HCH (insecticidal isomer) was of 97% purity

Lindane and DDT tolerant population was established in

the  ask (Bidlan 2003). DNA was isolated using Xcelgen

Bacterial gDNA kit and quality of gDNA was checked on

0.8 % agarose gel (loaded 5 l) for the single intact band.

The gel was run at 110 V for 30 min. 1 µl of each sample

was loaded in Nanodrop 8000 for determining A260/280

(Ogata et al., 1990).

The amplicons with the Illumina adaptors were ampli-

 ed by using i5 and i7 primers that add multiplexing

index sequences as well as common adapters required

for cluster generation (P5 and P7) as per the standard

Illumina requirements (Esling et al., 2015). The ampli-

tdsDNA HS Assay kit (Life Technologies).

After obtaining the Qubit concentration for the library

samples to complementary adapter oligos on  ow cell.

The adapters were designed to allow selective cleavage

of the forward strands after re-synthesis of the reverse

strand during sequencing. The copied reverse strand was

then used to sequence from the opposite end of the frag-

ments (Blomquistet al., 2013).

merge paired-end reads from next-generation sequenc-

ing experiments (Tanja et al., 2011). QIIME (Quantitative

Insight into Microbial Ecology) was used for analyzing

16S metagenome data from NGS platforms and, is imple-

mented in python language (Kuczynski et al., 2011). Chi-

species which are artifacts made during the PCR process.

then taken for analysis. A total of 2,44,283 non chi-

for support and encouragement for the research studies.