Under specific conditions cells are capable of forming elements which did not exist before in the environment and this is referred as biological transmutation. Fungi and bacteria can solubilize insoluble silicates to support growth as case with the biological weathering of rocks. In the present study bacteria capable of silica solubilisation were isolated from soil, river water, pond sediment and talc mineral. These isolates were screened in vitro in medium containing magnesium trisilicate (0.25%) for zone of solubilization. Pseudomonas stutzeri was capable of growth in mineral media supplemented with and without glucose (0.1% level) and uses silicon-based autotrophy as a source of energy to support CO 2 fixation. Experiments conducted eliminating the head space CO 2 in mineral medium (with silica) supplemented with and without glucose showed that the Pseudomonas stutzeri could grow under silica and mineral nutrients alone and produce 84.1% biomass in 7 d. SEM-EDAX of the bacterial culture revealed the presence of carbon in the cells grown exclusively on silica suggestive of bacterial transmutation of silica to carbon. This may be due to that, silicon though a bigger atom making longer and weaker bonds has four bonding electrons available like carbon. Similar to carbon, silicon also has four open slots in its outer electron shell which may also from a basis for complex biological life.

Mead is a traditional drink which results from the alcoholic fermentation of diluted honey carried out by yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae KF233529). The present investigation was carried out for the optimization of fermentation parameters for maximizing the yield of ethanol. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based central composite design was employed to obtain best combination of temperature, fermentation time and total soluble solids (TSS). The optimum conditions for ethanol yield were temperature 28°C, TSS 15°Brix and 6 days after fermentation. The model showed that the value of R 2 (0.9998) was high and p-value of interaction of variance was <0.0001. Hence the model can be said to be of highly significant.

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