METHYLMERCURY RESISTANCE IN DESULFOVIBRIO-DESULFURICANS STRAINS IN RELATION TO METHYLMERCURY DEGRADATION

Two strains of Desulfovibrio desulfuricans, one known to synthesize monomethylmercury from ionic mercury, were grown to determine methylmercury toxicity and for comparison with an anaerobic strain of Clostridium pasteurianum, a H-2 producer, and with the broad-spectrum mercury-resistant Pseudomonas putida strain FB-1, capable of degrading 1 mug of methylmercury to methane and elemental mercury in 2 h. The CH3HgCl resistance of D. desulfuricans strains was 10 times that of P. putida FB-1 and 100 times that of C. pasteurianum. The methylmercury resistance of D. desulfuricans was related to the disappearance of methylmercury from cultures by transformation to dimethylmercury, metacinnabar, methane, and traces of ionic mercury. During a 15-day experiment the kinetics of the two volatile compounds dimethylmercury [(CH3)2Hg] and methane were monitored in the liquid by a specific new technique with purge-and-trap gas chromatography in line with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and in the headspace by gas chromatography with flame ionization detection. Insoluble metacinnabar (cubic HgS) of biological origin was detected by X-ray diffractometry in the gray precipitate from the insoluble residue of the pellet of a 1-liter culture spiked with 100 mg of CH3HgCl. This was compared with a 1-liter culture of D. desulfuricans LS spiked with 100 mg of HgCl2. In a further experiment, it was demonstrated that insoluble, decomposable, white dimethylmercury sulfide [(CH3Hg)2S] formed instantly in the reaction of methylmercury with hydrogen sulfide. This organomercurial was extracted with chloroform and identified by gas chromatography in tine with mass spectrometry. The D. desulfuricans strains were resistant to high concentrations of methylmercury because they produced insoluble dimethylmercury sulfide, which slowly decomposed under anaerobic conditions to metacinnabar and volatilized to dimethylmercury and methane between pHs 6.2 and 6.5 for high (4.5-g . liter-1) or low (0.09-g . liter-1) sulfate contents. Methane was produced from CH3HgCl at a lower rate than by the broad-spectrum Hg-resistant P. putida strain FB-1.