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Agro-industry by-products are abundant in various valuable compounds. Some of these raw materials are considered as a cheaper carbon source for polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production when compared with pure substrates. It is however often a costly affair for industries to recover the residual carbon components. In this study, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB)] was produced using a marine Bacillus megaterium UMTKB-1 strain from sweetwater, a by-product from cane sugar refining process. The bioconversion was initiated in shaken-flasks and fermenter experiments. Applications of seawater and sweetwater mixture as well as sweetwater only as PHA culture media were investigated. The produced polymer was characterized using Gas Chromatography (GC) and Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC). P(3HB) accumulation from tested carbon sources ranged from 3 to 49 wt%. The strain could accumulate P(3HB) in saline conditions when minimal salts medium was replaced with seawater and sweetwater. The P(3HB) content was between 7 and 27 wt%. This strain was also able to grow and accumulate up to 14 wt% P(3HB) when sweetwater was the sole PHA biosynthesis medium. The weights of P(3HB) produced was in the range 3-12 × 10 5 with polydispersity index values ranging from 2.7 to 3.8. The agroindustry by-products have proven to be potential carbon feedstocks for P(3HB) production. The tested strain was able to grow and accumulate P(3HB) in a novel carbon substrate medium, the sweetwater. This by-product could be used as a raw material for P(3HB) production without any pretreatment.

A significant source of microplastics is from the usage of microbeads in the market since petrochemical plastic bead is a material used in cosmetic scrubs. A possible way to counteract the problem is by the substitution of synthetic plastic to natural biodegradable polymer. Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a general class of thermoplastic microbial polymer and it is the best alternative to some petrochemical plastics due to its biodegradability. Some PHA has earned its way into cosmetic application due to its biocompatibility. This data article reports data on the development of biodegradable microbeads by using the double emulsion solvent evaporation technique. Our data describe the extraction of biopolymer from marine bacteria that was cultivated in shaken flask culture, removal of endotoxins using oxidizing agent, the production of microbeads using a peristaltic pump with a specific flowrate and silicon tubing, and the cytotoxicity of the microbeads.