No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

BACKGROUND: About 25,000 oil tankers are transported annually through the Persian Gulf in Iran. Therefore, oil pollution in this region is very high. Research on the use of marine bacteria to degrade crude oil has yielded good results in recent years. The present study investigates bacteria that are symbiotic with marine corals and their ability to degrade crude oil. Corals were collected from five regions in the Persian Gulf and enriched with decomposing bacteria in ONR7a culture. After biochemical and molecular identification of bacterial isolates, the ability of the strains to degrade crude oil by spectrophotometric, gravimetric, and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy (GC-MS) methods was investigated.RESULTS: Finally, 26 bacterial strains were identified from 5 coral samples. The efficient strains that had the highest crude-oil degradation belonged to genera Cobetia, Shewanella, Alcanivorax, and Cellulosimicrobium. Strains IAUK3568, IAUK3568, IAUK3502, IAUK3531, and IAUK3552 exhibited a maximum degradation of crude oil of 93.5%, 88.13%, 87.24%, 85.17%, and 77.3%, respectively. CONCLUSION:The results showed that all bacterial isolates degrade medium-chain alkanes better than long-and short-chain alkanes. The data obtained in this study confirm that the corals of the Persian Gulf have the necessary bacterial diversity to decompose crude oil and, consequently, reduce pollution in this region.

No abstract