ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Chemical dispersants can suppress the activity of natural oil-degrading microorganisms.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 319 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eco-friendly and sustainable gemini ionic liquid surfactants derived from coffee waste: design, surface activity, oil spill treatment, and antimicrobial performance.RSC advances · 2026Article
- Elevated heterotrophic activity in Guaymas Basin hydrothermal plumes influences deep-sea carbon cycling.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Oil spill surface washing agents and chemical herders drive microbial community structure impacting biodegradation.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Anaerobic benzene oxidation inApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Metatranscriptomic response of deep ocean microbial populations to infusions of oil and/or synthetic chemical dispersant.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Potential of some microbial isolates on diesel hydrocarbons removal, bio surfactant production and biofilm formation.Journal of environmental health science & engineering · 2023Article
- Species-specific responses of marine bacteria to environmental perturbation.ISME communications · 2023Article
- Effects of Dispersant on the Petroleum Hydrocarbon Biodegradation and Microbial Communities in Seawater from the Baltic Sea and Norwegian Sea.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Succession Patterns of Microbial Composition and Activity following the Diesel Spill in an Urban River.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Metatranscriptomic shifts suggest shared biodegradation pathways for Corexit 9500 components and crude oil in Arctic seawater.Environmental microbiology reports · 2023Article
- Impacts of dispersants on microbial communities and ecological systems.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2023Review
- Substrate-independent expression of key functional genes inFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Prospects in the bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants from hypersaline environments: A review.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Review
- Interfacial biodegradation of phenanthrene in bacteria-carboxymethyl cellulose-stabilized Pickering emulsions.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Microbiomes of Hadal Fishes across Trench Habitats Contain Similar Taxa and Known Piezophiles.mSphere · 2022Article
- Biosurfactants and chemotaxis interplay in microbial consortium-based hydrocarbons degradation.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Review
- Metagenomic and Metatranscriptomic Responses of Chemical Dispersant Application during a Marine Dilbit Spill.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Dispersed Crude Oil Induces Dysbiosis in the Red SnapperMicrobiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Mesopelagic microbial community dynamics in response to increasing oil and Corexit 9500 concentrations.PloS one · 2022Article
- Bacterial and archaeal diversity in oil fields and reservoirs and their potential role in hydrocarbon recovery and bioprospecting.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Review
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
14 authors at 6 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
During the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the application of 7 million liters of chemical dispersants aimed to stimulate microbial crude oil degradation by increasing the bioavailability of oil compounds. However, the effects of dispersants on oil biodegradation rates are debated. In laboratory experiments, we simulated environmental conditions comparable to the hydrocarbon-rich, 1,100 m deep plume that formed during the Deepwater Horizon discharge. The presence of dispersant significantly altered the microbial community composition through selection for potential dispersant-degrading Colwellia, which also bloomed in situ in Gulf deep waters during the discharge. In contrast, oil addition to deepwater samples in the absence of dispersant stimulated growth of natural hydrocarbon-degrading Marinobacter. In these deepwater microcosm experiments, dispersants did not enhance heterotrophic microbial activity or hydrocarbon oxidation rates. An experiment with surface seawater from an anthropogenically derived oil slick corroborated the deepwater microcosm results as inhibition of hydrocarbon turnover was observed in the presence of dispersants, suggesting that the microcosm findings are broadly applicable across marine habitats. Extrapolating this comprehensive dataset to real world scenarios questions whether dispersants stimulate microbial oil degradation in deep ocean waters and instead highlights that dispersants can exert a negative effect on microbial hydrocarbon degradation rates.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.