Jean M. F. Martins

• PhD Soil Microbiology and Physics
• Group Leader at French National Centre for Scientific Research

Aims Yttrium (Y) holds significant industrial and economic importance, being listed as a critical element on the European list of critical elements, thus emphasizing the high priority for its recovery. Bacterial strategies play a crucial role in the biorecovery of metals, offering a promising and environmentally friendly approach. Therefore, gainin...

Environmental pollution is one of the main challenges faced by humanity. By their ubiquity and vast range of metabolic capabilities, microorganisms are affected by pollution with consequences on their host organisms and on the functioning of their environment and also play key roles in the fate of pollutants through the degradation, transformation...

Various pharmaceuticals are essential for livestock farming, but some are highly toxic to aquatic life if they reach surface water bodies. Mediterranean Climate is characterized by dry summers followed by intense autumn storms. We studied the effect of these climatic conditions on the risk of pharmaceutical residues transfer to streams at the catch...

Introduction Micro-scale analysis of microbes in soil is essential to the overall understanding of microbial organization, interactions, and ecosystem functioning. Soil fractionation according to its aggregated structure has been used to access microbial habitats. While bacterial communities have been extensively described, little is known about th...

Standard proxies for reconstructing surface mass balance (SMB) in Antarctic ice cores are often inaccurate or coarsely resolved when applied to more complicated environments away from dome summits. Here, we propose an alternative SMB proxy based on photolytic fractionation of nitrogen isotopes in nitrate observed at 114 sites throughout East Antarc...

Many contaminants of agricultural origin are released into rural environments, particularly at the soil surface. Their fate has been extensively investigated in repacked soils, but only few studies have addressed their transport in structurally preserved natural soils. Much remains unknown about their fate and transfer within and between environmen...

Standard proxies for reconstructing surface mass balance (SMB) in Antarctic ice cores are often inaccurate or coarsely resolved when applied to more complicated environments away from dome summits. Here, we propose an alternative SMB proxy based on photolytic fractionation of nitrogen isotopes in nitrate observed at 114 sites throughout East Antarc...

Microbial analysis at the micro scale of soil is essential to the overall understanding of microbial organization and interactions, and necessary for a better understanding of soil ecosystem functioning. While bacterial communities have been extensively described, little is known about the organization of fungal communities as well as functional po...

Characterizing bacterial biofilm growth in porous media is important for developing reliable numerical models of biofouling in industrial biofilters. One of the promising imaging methods to do that has been a recent successful application of X‐ray microtomography. However, this technique requires a contrast agent (1‐chloronaphtalene, for example) t...

Microbial spatial distribution has mostly been studied at field to global scales (i.e., ecosystem scales). However, the spatial organization at small scales (i.e., centimeter to millimeter scales), which can help improve our understanding of the impacts of spatial communities structure on microbial functioning, has received comparatively little att...

The processes controlling antibiotics fate in ecosystems are poorly understood, yet their presence can inhibit bacterial growth and induce the development of bacterial resistance. Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) is one of the most frequently detected sulfonamides in natural environments due to its low metabolism and molecular properties. This work presents...

The fate of nanoparticles (NPs) in soil under relevant environmental conditions is still poorly understood. In this study, the mobility of two metal-oxide nanoparticles (CuO and TiO2) in contrasting agricultural soils was investigated in water-saturated soil columns. The transport of TiO2 and CuO-NPs were assessed in six soils with three different...

Primary Biogenic Organic Aerosols (PBOA) were recently shown to be produced by only a few types of microorganisms, emitted by the surrounding vegetation in the case of a regionally homogeneous field site. This study presents the first comprehensive description of the structure and main sources of airborne microbial communities associated with tempo...

Primary biogenic organic aerosols (PBOAs) represent a major fraction of coarse organic matter (OM) in air. Despite their implication in many atmospheric processes and human health problems, we surprisingly know little about PBOA characteristics (i.e., composition, dominant sources, and contribution to airborne particles). In addition, specific prim...

On the basis of Gram‐negative bacterium Escherichia coli models previously published in the literature, the transmembrane voltage induced by the application of an alternating current (AC) electric field on a bacterial suspension is calculated using COMSOL Multiphysics software, in the range 1–20 MHz, for longitudinal and transverse field orientatio...

Groundwater is essential for the Earth biosphere but is often contaminated by harmful chemical compounds due to both anthropogenic and natural causes. A key factor controlling the fate of harmful chemicals in groundwater is the reduction/oxidation (redox) conditions. The formation factors for the groundwater redox conditions are insufficiently unde...

Abstract. Primary biogenic organic aerosols (PBOA) represent a major fraction of coarse organic matter (OM) in air. Despite their implication in many atmospheric processes and human health problems, we surprisingly know little about PBOA characteristics (i.e., composition, dominant sources, and contribution to airborne-particles). In addition, spec...

Epidemiological studies suggest that the main part of chronic effects from air pollution is likely to be linked with particulate matter (PM). Oxidative potential (OP) of PM is gaining strong interest as a promising health exposure metric. This study combined atmospheric detailed composition results obtained for seven different urban background envi...

An innovative soil reinforcement method developed since 2004 is currently being adapted for hydraulic structures in the frame of the BOREAL project. The objective is to prevent mechanical failure of the soil due to internal erosion or liquefaction. The method is based on microbially induced urea-based carbonate precipitation. Four different erosion...

Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) is one of the antibiotics most commonly detected in aquatic and terrestrial environments and is still widely used, especially in low income countries. SMX is assumed to be highly mobile in soils due to its intrinsic molecular properties. Ten soils with contrasting properties and representative of the catchment soil types and...

The primary sugar compounds (SCs, defined as glucose, arabitol, and mannitol) are widely recognized as suitable molecular markers to characterize and apportion primary biogenic organic aerosol emission sources. This work improves our understanding of the spatial behavior and distribution of these chemical species and evidences their major effective...

The primary sugar compounds (SC, defined as glucose, arabitol and mannitol) are widely recognized as suitable molecular markers to characterize and apportion primary biogenic organic aerosol emission sources. This work improves our understanding of the spatial behavior and distribution of these chemical species and evidences their major effective e...

A growing number of studies are using specific primary sugar species, such as sugar alcohols or primary saccharides, as marker compounds to characterize and apportion primary biogenic organic aerosols (PBOAs) in the atmosphere. To better understand their annual cycles, as well as their spatiotemporal abundance in terms of concentrations and sources...

Metal-oxide nanoparticles (NPs) such as copper oxide (CuO) NPs offer promising perspectives for the development of novel agro-chemical formulations of pesticides and fertilizers. However, their potential impact on agro-ecosystem functioning still remains to be investigated. Here, we assessed the impact of CuO-NPs (0.1, 1, and 100 mg/kg dry soil) on...

Core Ideas OZCAR is a network of sites studying the critical zone. OZCAR covers various disciplines. OZCAR will help disciplines to work together for a better representation and modeling of the critical zone. The French critical zone initiative, called OZCAR (Observatoires de la Zone Critique–Application et Recherche or Critical Zone Observatories...

A growing number of studies are using specific primary sugar species, such as sugar alcohols or primary saccharides, as marker compounds to characterize and apportion primary biogenic organic aerosols (PBOA) in the atmosphere. To better understand their annual cycles, as well as their spatio-temporal abundance in terms of concentrations and sources...

Determining site density of reactive sites of metals in the main soil phases remains a challenging task. This study aimed to show that densities of reactive sites in soil may be assessed by a fractionation procedure based on soil being spatially organized as aggregates. The method is described with copper as a model trace element and a common silty...

Many studies have demonstrated associations between exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) and adverse health outcomes in humans that can be explained by PM capacity to induce oxidative stress in vivo. Thus, assays have been developed to quantify the oxidative potential (OP) of PM as a more refined exposure metric than PM mass alone. Only a sm...

Antibiotics are emergent contaminants that can induce adverse effects in terrestrial and aquatic organisms. The surface water compartment is of particular concern as it receives direct waste water discharge. Modeling is highlighted as an essential tool to understand the fate and behavior of these compounds and to assess their ecotoxicological risk....

Many studies have demonstrated associations between exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) and adverse health outcomes in humans that can be explained by PM capacity to induce oxidative stress in vivo. Thus, assays have been developed to quantify the oxidative potential (OP) of PM as a more refined exposure metric than PM mass alone. Only a sm...

Bioaerosols represent up to 15–25% of PM by mass, but there is currently no assessment of their impact on Oxidative Potential (OP), or capacity of particulate matter (PM) to produce damaging oxidative reactions in the human lungs. Here, the OP of selected bioaerosols (bacteria cells vs fungal spores) was assessed through the cell-free DTT assay. Re...

Particulate matter (PM) induces oxidative stress in vivo, leading to adverse health effects. Oxidative potential (OP) of PM is increasingly studied as a relevant metric for health impact (instead of PM mass concentration) as much of the ambient particle mass do not contribute to PM toxicity. Several assays have been developed to quantify PM oxidati...

The lack of basic infrastructure for water supply, sewage systems, or wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) induces wastewater discharges into the environment and inappropriate disposal of wastes, impacting environmental quality. Pollution by urban wastewaters will modify the structure and possibly the function of native bacterial communities through...

Titanium-dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) are increasingly released in agricultural soils through, e.g. biosolids, irrigation or nanoagrochemicals. Soils are submitted to a wide range of concentrations of TiO2-NPs depending on the type of exposure. However, most studies have assessed the effects of unrealistically high concentrations, and the dose-...

An increasing number of studies pointed out the ubiquitous presence of medical residues in surface and ground water as well as in soil compartments. Not only antibiotics can be found in the environment but also their transformation products about which little information is generally available. The development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics...

Cities in developing countries encounter rapid waves of social transformation and economic development where the environment is mostly a neglected aspect. The Katari watershed encompasses mining areas, El Alto city (one of the fastest growing urban areas in South America and the biggest in the Altiplano) as well as agricultural areas. Its outlet is...

In this work, the problem of intracellular currents in longilinear bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, suspended in a physiological medium and submitted to a harmonic voltage (AC), is analyzed using the Finite-Element-based software COMSOL Multiphysics. Bacterium was modeled as a cylindrical capsule, ended by semi-spheres and surrounded by a dielec...

The development of a reliable model allowing accurate predictions of biofilm growth in porous media relies on a good knowledge of the temporal evolution of biofilm structure within the porous network. Since little is known about the real 3-D structure of biofilms in porous media, this work was aimed at developing a new experimental protocol to visu...

Soils are facing new environmental stressors, such as titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO 2-NPs). While these emerging pollutants are increasingly released into most ecosystems, including agricultural fields, their potential impacts on soil and its function remain to be investigated. Here we report the response of the microbial community of an agri...

Soils are exposed to nanoparticles (NPs) due to their increasing use in many commercial products. Adverse effects of NPs on soil microorganisms have been reported in several ecotoxicological studies using microcosms. Although repeated exposures are more likely to occur in soils, most of these previous studies were performed as a single exposure to...

The subject of the interactions between electromagnetic (EM) fields and living cells is a strong issue for several decades. Large number of works have been done to study the EM field penetration and inner induced currents in living microorganisms. Relevant information to be collected deals with level and frequency of the EM signal that may affect t...

Stable isotope ratios of nitrate preserved in deep ice cores are expected to provide unique and valuable information regarding paleoatmospheric processes. However, due to the post-depositional loss of nitrate in snow, this information may be erased or significantly modified by physical or photochemical processes before preservation in ice. We inves...

Various sources are at the origin of the presence of colloids in the environment. Waste as being sources of emission of colloids is a recent problem dating 2010s. A first study permitted to characterize the emission of colloids by 5 different industrial waste. Their future and their transport in the environment remains for the moment little known....

The study of local hydrodynamic properties of three-phase bioreactors in biotechnology processes is of great importance, mainly because of the complex interaction between bioreactor and microorganisms. However, classical techniques used for measuring local hydrodynamic properties such as single needle probes are mainly limited to two-phase flows. I...

Populations living close to mining sites are often exposed to important heavy metal concentrations, especially through atmospheric fallouts. Identifying the main sources of metal-rich particles remains a challenge because of the similarity of the particle signatures from the polluted sites. This work provides an original combination of physical and...

Interactions between electromagnetic (EM) fields or currents and living cells constitute a recurrent subject of interest for several decades, and their effects have been profusely discussed, especially for the frequency bands currently encountered in everyday life of humans. In a more restrictive domain, large number of studies have been done, focu...

Many cases of groundwater contamination by immobile pollutants have been described in the last years. These phenomena are hardly predictable if mechanisms inducing leaching of high amounts of contaminant within short periods are not taken into account. This is the case of particulate transport of pollutants, although only few experimental evidence...

The Titicaca Lake is the most important water resource over the Andean plateau and the ecological equilibrium of this region is nowadays perturbed by recent changes in land use and management practices. The Katari watershed encompasses mining area, cities representing over 1.2 million habitants, and agricultural zones before ending in Cohana bay in...

Stable isotope ratios of nitrate preserved in deep ice cores are expected to provide unique and valuable information regarding paleo-atmospheric processes. However, due to the post-depositional loss of nitrate in snow, this information may be erased or significantly modified by physical or photochemical processes before preservation in ice. We have...

Soil microbes play major agricultural functions such as the transformation of soil organic matter into plant fertilizers. The effects of agricultural practices on soil microbes at the scale of plots, from meters to hectare, are well documented. However, the impact at soil microscale, from micrometers to millimeters, is much less known. Therefore, w...

The development of reliable models to accurately predict biofilm growth in porous media relies on a good knowledge of the temporal evolution of biofilms structure within the porous network. Since little is known on the true 3D structure of biofilms developed in porous media, this work aimed at developing a new experimental protocol to visualize the...

Bacterial biosorption of heavy metals is often considered as a surface complexation process, without considering other retention compartments than cell walls. Although this approach gives a good description of the global biosorption process, it hardly permits the prediction of the fate of biosorbed metals in the environment. This study examines the...

Bacterial cells and bacterial exopolysaccharides differ strongly in their respective colloidal and polymeric habits. This suggests different reactivities toward metals and protons, although recent studies point to the similarity of such substrates in terms of site density and metal complexation strength. The aim of this paper is to investigate the...

Os estados do nordeste brasileiro suprem a demanda de exportacao de manga nos meses em que a oferta e inexistente. Um dos fatores responsaveis pelo aumento da producao destes frutos e a presenca de substâncias reguladoras de crescimento vegetal. Entre elas destaca-se o paclobutrazol (PBZ). Porem, este composto pode permanecer ativo no solo durante...

The main soil properties related to the leaching of naphthalene in soils are particle size, organic matter content and the mineralogical composition of silt and clay fractions. The aim of this study was to evaluate naphtalene reactive transfer in soil columns determinated by the dispersion and retardation of naphthalene in soil samples collected fr...

[1] Here we present measurements of the size-resolved concentration and isotopic composition of atmospheric nitrate (NO3−) collected during a cruise in coastal California. Significant differences in air mass origin and atmospheric chemistry were observed in the two main regions of this cruise (South and Central Coast) with corresponding differences...

The objective of this work was to investigate the influence of hydrodynamics on the growth kinetics of surface-adhering Pseudomonas putida cells. The results showed in particular that under non substrate-limiting conditions, the early step of bacterial apparent growth rate is lower than those measured with suspended cells. Contrary to previously ci...

In this study we evaluated the effect of the long term organic management of a vineyard-soil on the biogeochemistry of copper at the micro-aggregate scale. The model vineyard-soil (Mâcon-France) experienced a long-term field-experiment that consisted in amendments and vegetations with various materials and plants. We studied specifically the effect...

The synthesis and the characterization of three kinds of labeled silica nanoparticles were performed. Three different labeling strategies were investigated: fluorescent organic molecule (FITC) embedded in silica matrix, heavy metal core (Ag(0)) and radioactive core ((110m)Ag) surrounded by a silica shell. The main properties and the suitability of...

Here we report the measurement of the comprehensive isotopic composition (δ15N, Δ17O and δ18O) of nitrate at the air-snow interface at Dome C, Antarctica (DC, 75° 06' S, 123° 19' E) and in snow pits along a transect across the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) between 66° S and 78° S. For each of the East Antarctic snow pits in most of which nitrate...

This study investigates the size and concentration effects on the transport of silica colloids in columns of sandy aquifer material. Colloid transport experiments were performed with specifically developed fluorescent labeled silica colloids in columns of a repacked natural porous medium under hydro-geochemical conditions representative of sandy aq...

The objective of this work was to evaluate the transport of Escherichia coli cells in undisturbed cores of a brown leached soil collected at La Côte St André (France). Two undisturbed soil cores subjected to repeated injections of bacterial cells and/or bromide tracer were used to investigate the effect of soil hydrodynamics and ionic strength on c...

Les géosynthétiques sont de plus en plus utilisés pour renforcer les barrières d'étanchéité des installations de stockage des déchets non dangereux. Afin de réduire l'impact environnemental des installations, les utilisateurs de ces matériaux ont donc besoin de guides et de recommandations sur leur mise en ½uvre délicate, mais également d'estimatio...

We report on dual isotopic analyses (delta N-15 and Delta O-17) of atmospheric nitrate at daily time-resolution during the OASIS intensive field campaign at Barrow, Alaska, in March-April 2009. Such measurements allow for the examination of the coupling between snowpack emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) and their involvement in reactive...

Recebido em 2/2/11; aceito em 8/6/11; publicado na web em 22/7/11 MODELING OF THE KINETICS BIODEGRADATION OF PACLOBUTRAZOL IN TWO SOILS OF THE SEMIARID NORTHEAST BRAZIL. Mathematical models can help to prevent high levels of toxic substances in soil or fruits of plants treated with pesticides and indicate that such substances should be systematical...

Mathematical models can help to prevent high levels of toxic substances in soil or fruits of plants treated with pesticides and indicate that such substances should be systematically monitored. The aim of this research was to study the kinetics of paclobutrazol biodegradation by soil native bacteria using mathematical models. Three models were used...

Paclobutrazol is growth regulator of plants that has low mobility in soil and therefore has accumulated. The objective of this study was to investigate the paclobutrazol biodegradation in two soils from the São Francisco River Valley. The biodegradation experiments were conducted in batch using paclobutrazol and paclobutrazol added glycerol. The ex...

The objective was to estimate the genuine microbial content of ice samples from refrozen water (accretion ice) from the subglacial Lake Vostok (Antarctica) buried beneath the 4-km thick East Antarctic ice sheet. The samples were extracted by heavy deep ice drilling from 3659 m below the surface. High pressure, a low carbon and chemical content, iso...

In an attempt to optimize the cost-efficiency of landfill leachate treatment by biological denitrification process, our study focused on finding low-cost alternatives to traditional expensive chemicals such as composted garden refuse and pine bark, which are both available in large amount in South African landfill sites. The overall objective was t...

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The nitrogen (δ15N) and triple oxygen (δ17O and δ18O) isotopic composition of nitrate (NO3−) was measured year-round in the atmosphere and snow pits at Dome C, Antarctica (DC, 75.1° S, 123.3° E), and in surface snow on a transect between DC and the coast. Comparison to the isotopic signal in atmospheric NO3− shows that snow NO3− is significantly en...

The nitrogen (δ15N) and triple oxygen (δ17/18O) isotopic composition of nitrate (NO3−) was measured year-round in the atmosphere and snow pits at Dome C (DC, 75.1° S, 123.3° E), and in surface snow on a transect between DC and the coast. Snow pit profiles of δ15N (δ18O) in NO3− show significant enrichment (depletion) of >200 (