Preliminary assessment of microbial community recovery after an accidental oil spill by molecular analysis.

In this work, we tried a method based on molecular analysis to assess the natural microbial remediation in an unsaturated soil, accidentally contaminated by a petro-leum spill-out during tank transportation. Total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) in soil was quantified by GC/MS. The residue amount in the contaminated soil after 1 and 13 months from the oil spill out was analyzed to be 327 and 215 mg kg-1, respectively. DNA isolated from the soil was amplified by PCR. Amplified ribosomal DNA restric-tion analysis (ARDRA-PCR) was used for assessing the effect of petroleum contamination on soil microbial com-munity. The analysis of 16S ribosomal DNA gene evi-denced an important recovery of the microbial community after 1 year from the contamination accident.