Biosurfactants are bioactive agents that can be produced by many different microorganisms. Among those, special attention is given to yeasts, since they can produce many types of biosurfactants in large scale, using several kinds of substrates, justifying its use for industrial production of those products. For this production to be economically viable, the use of residual carbon sources is recommended. The present study isolated yeasts from soil contaminated with petroleum oil hydrocarbons and assessed their capacity for producing biosurfactants in low cost substrates. From a microbial consortium enriched, seven yeasts were isolated, all showing potential for producing biosurfactants in soybean oil. The isolate LBPF 3, characterized as Candida antarctica, obtained the highest levels of production - with a final production of 13.86 g/L. The isolate LBPF 9, using glycerol carbon source, obtained the highest reduction in surface tension in the growth medium: approximately 43% of reduction after 24 hours of incubation. The products obtained by the isolates presented surfactant activity, which reduced water surface tension to values that varied from 34 mN/m, obtained from the product of isolates LBPF 3 and 16 LBPF 7 (respectively characterized as Candida antarctica and Candida albicans) to 43 mN/m from the isolate LPPF 9, using glycerol as substrate. The assessed isolates all showed potential for the production of biosurfactants in conventional sources of carbon as well as in agroindustrial residue, especially in glycerol.

O óleo diesel é um composto derivado do petróleo, constituído basicamente por hidrocarbonetos. Condições precárias no processo de transporte e armazenagem desse produto contribuem significativamente para derrames acidentais, ocasionando sérios problemas ecológicos no solo e água, alterando assim toda a diversidade microbiológica do ambiente. A estratégia de clonagem e sequenciamento do gene 16S rRNA é uma das técnicas moleculares que permitem estimar e comparar a diversidade microbiana de diferentes amostras ambientais, sejam elas impactadas ou não. O objetivo deste trabalho foi estimar a diversidade de microrganismos pertencentes ao domínio Bacteria em um consórcio degradador de óleo diesel por meio de sequenciamento parcial do gene 16S rRNA. Após extração do DNA metagenômico, o material foi amplificado por reação de PCR com oligonucleotídeos iniciadores específicos para o gene 16S rRNA. Os produtos da reação de PCR foram clonados em vetor pGEM T Easy (Promega) e transformados em células competentes de Escherichia coli. O sequenciamento parcial dos clones foi feito com oligonucleotídeos universais do vetor. A biblioteca obtida gerou 431 clones. Todos os clones mostraram similaridade com o filo Proteobacteria, onde as Gammaproteobacteria compreenderam o grupo de maior representatividade, com 49,8 % dos clones, seguida das Alphaproteobacteira, com 44,8 %, e das Betaproteobacteria, com 5,4 %. O gênero Pseudomonas destacou-se como representante com maior frequência de clones na biblioteca, seguido pelos gêneros Parvibaculum e Sphingobium. Após o sequenciamento parcial do gene 16S rRNA, a diversidade bacteriana do consórcio foi estimada utilizando-se o software DOTUR. Essas sequências, quando comparadas com as do banco do National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), mostraram grande correlação entre os dados gerados pelo software utilizado e aqueles depositados no NCBI.

Diesel oil is a compound derived from petroleum, consisting primarily of hydrocarbons. Poor conditions in transportation and storage of this product can contribute significantly to accidental spills causing serious ecological problems in soil and water and affecting the diversity of the microbial environment. The cloning and sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene is one of the molecular techniques that allows estimation and comparison of the microbial diversity in different environmental samples. The aim of this work was to estimate the diversity of microorganisms from the Bacteria domain in a consortium specialized in diesel oil degradation through partial sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. After the extraction of DNA metagenomics, the material was amplified by PCR reaction using specific oligonucleotide primers for the 16S rRNA gene. The PCR products were cloned into a pGEM-T-Easy vector (Promega), and Escherichia coli was used as the host cell for recombinant DNAs. The partial clone sequencing was obtained using universal oligonucleotide primers from the vector. The genetic library obtained generated 431 clones. All the sequenced clones presented similarity to phylum Proteobacteria, with Gammaproteobacteria the most present group (49.8 % of the clones), followed by Alphaproteobacteira (44.8 %) and Betaproteobacteria (5.4 %). The Pseudomonas genus was the most abundant in the metagenomic library, followed by the Parvibaculum and the Sphingobium genus, respectively. After partial sequencing of the 16S rRNA, the diversity of the bacterial consortium was estimated using DOTUR software. When comparing these sequences to the database from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a strong correlation was found between the data generated by the software used and the data deposited in NCBI.