Laboratory studies on chemolithoautotrophic microbial denitrification coupled to pyrite oxidation at circumneutral pH yielded conflicting results. Some studies indicated that microbial oxidation of pyrite does occur, but several reports have shown that no microbial pyrite oxidation took place in experiments with pyrite as electron donor and nitrate as electron acceptor. We propose that inconsistent experimental and analytical protocols may cause substantial uncertainty in the interpretation of results from such laboratory studies, and may even produce artifacts. In this study, a comprehensive overview of possible pitfalls and artifacts in relation to geochemical and microbiological interferences is provided. Key interferences are impurities of reduced sulfur species associated with pyrite, interferences of nitrite and dissolved Fe(III) with quantitative spectrophotometric determination of Fe(II) and Fe(III) during acidic extractions, interference of oxygen, occurrence of residual iron and sulfur compounds in the reaction medium, and interference of cell-associated and stored sulfur. Therefore, we propose a series of experimental standard protocols to overcome these interferences in future studies on chemolithoautotrophic denitrification with pyrite.

在周围pH值下，化石自养微生物反硝化作用与黄铁矿氧化反应的实验室研究得出了相互矛盾的结果。一些研究表明确实发生了黄铁矿的微生物氧化，但是一些报告表明，在以黄铁矿为电子供体，硝酸盐为电子受体的实验中，没有发生微生物黄铁矿的氧化。我们建议不一致的实验和分析方案可能会导致此类实验室研究结果解释的不确定性，甚至可能会产生假象。在这项研究中，提供了与地球化学和微生物干扰有关的可能的陷阱和伪影的全面概述。关键干扰是与黄铁矿相关的还原硫物种的杂质，分光光度法测定酸性萃取过程中亚硝酸盐和溶解的铁（III）的干扰，氧的干扰，反应介质中残留铁和硫化合物的出现以及细胞相关物质和金属的干扰储存的硫。因此，我们提出了一系列实验标准方案，以克服在黄铁矿化自养生物反硝化的未来研究中的这些干扰。