Studies on composition and stability of a large membered bacterial consortium degrading phenol

Abstract

A ten member microbial consortium (AS) consisting of eight phenol-degrading and two non-phenol-degrading strains of bacteria was developed and maintained in a fed-batch reactor by feeding 500 mg l(-1) phenol for four years at 28 +/- 3 degrees C. The consortium could degrade 99% of 500 mg l(-1) phenol after 24 hours incubation with a biomass increase of 2.6 x 10(7) to 4 x 10(12) CFU ml(-1). Characterization of the members revealed that it consisted of 4 principal genera, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Rhodococcus, Streptomyces and an unidentified bacterium. Phenol degradation by the mixed culture and Bacillus subtilis, an isolate from the consortium was compared using a range of phenol concentrations (400 to 700 mg l(-1)) and by mixing with either 160 mg l(-1) glucose or 50 mg l(-1) of 2,4-dichlorophenol in the medium. Simultaneous utilization of unrelated mixed substrates (glucose/2,4-dichlorophenol) by the consortium and Bacillus subtilis, indicated the diauxic growth pattern of the organisms. A unique characteristic of the members of the consortia was their ability to oxidize chloro aromatic compounds via meta pathway and methyl aromatic compounds via ortho cleavage pathway. The ability of a large membered microbial consortia to maintain its stability with respect to its composition and effectiveness in phenol degradation indicated its suitability for bioremediation applications.

Kinetics of batch microbial degradation of phenols by indigenous binary mixed culture of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Pseudomonas fluorescens

“…For equivalent initial phenol concentrations, the phenol degradation efficiencies obtained in this work were higher than those reported by Agarry (2008) for the monoculture of indigenous P. aeruginosa and P. fluorescens, respectively. This was in agreement with other workers (Ambujon, 2001;Guieysse et al, 2001;Oboirien et al, 2005;Prpich and Daugulis, 2005) that mixed culture offers an improved performance than mono or pure culture of microorganisms. However, it is in contrast with the observation of Zilli et al (1993).…”

Enhanced biodegradation of phenol by a microbial consortium in a solid?liquid two phase partitioning bioreactor

“…As effective as these TPPBs have been, they do have several limitations, as noted above, which restrict operation to the use of pure strains of organisms. Pure cultures consisting of single strains of microorganisms have shown to be effective in the degradation of phenol (Bandyopadhyay et al 1998;Beshay et al 2002;Hamed et al 2003;Seker et al 1997;Vrionis et al 2002), however, it has also been shown that microbial consortia can offer improved performance (Ambujom 2001;Guieysse et al 2001b). The benefit of using a robust microbial consortium is often due to its capability of degrading a variety of toxic substrates without the accumulation of toxic intermediates (Acuna-Arguelles et al 2003).…”

Interaction Algae–Bacteria Consortia: A New Application of Heavy Metals Bioremediation

“…At present, environmental bioremediation has been used to explore the bacterial consortia role in many different ways. For example, in contaminants such as BTEX (Littlejohns and Daugulis 2008 ), Crude oil (Tang et al 2010 ;RahmanT , P. frederiksbergensis , P. fragi T , P. paucimobilis , P. vesicularis , P. capacia Ambujom 2001 ), Rhodococcus (Ambujom 2001 ), Pedobacter ( P. piscium ), Sphingomonas ( S. paucimobilis Wang et al 2004 ), Stenotrophomonas ( S. rhizophila , S. maltophilia Kim et al 2009 ), Streptomyces (Ambujom 2001 ), and Xanthomonas ( X. maltophilia Wang et al 2004 ), are involved with a high level of effi ciency.…”