Isolation and Screening of Polyhydroxyalkanoates Producing Bacteria from Pulp, Paper, and Cardboard Industry Wastes

Abstract

Background. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are storage materials that accumulate by various bacteria as energy and carbon reserve materials. They are biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and also biocompatible bioplastics. Unlike petrochemical-based plastics that take several decades to fully degrade, PHAs can be completely degraded within a year by variety of microorganisms into CO2 and water. In the present study, we aim to utilize pulp, paper, and cardboard industry sludge and waste water for the isolation and screening of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) accumulating bacteria and production of cost-effective PHB using cardboard industry waste water. Results. A total of 42 isolates showed black-blue coloration when stained with Sudan black B, a preliminary screening agent for lipophilic compounds, and a total of 15 isolates showed positive result with Nile blue A staining, a more specific dye for PHA granules. The isolates NAP11 and NAC1 showed maximum PHA production 79.27% and 77.63% with polymer concentration of 5.236 g/L and 4.042 g/L with cardboard industry waste water. Both of the selected isolates, NAP11 and NAC1, were classified up to genus level by studying their morphological and biochemical characteristics and were found to be Enterococcus sp., Brevundimonas sp. and, respectively. Conclusion. The isolates Enterococcus sp. NAP11 and Brevundimonas sp. NAC1 can be considered as good candidates for industrial production of PHB from cardboard industry waste water. We are reporting for the first time the use of cardboard industry waste water as a cultivation medium for the PHB production.

Bacterial polyhydroxyalkanoates-eco-friendly next generation plastic: Production, biocompatibility, biodegradation, physical properties and applications

“…There are many phenotypic detection methods for detecting intracellular PHA granules, which are applied to the screening of PHA producers, including Sudan black B staining (65)(66)(67), Nile blue A staining (68)(69)(70) and Nile red (71), which result in dark blue or fluorescent granules. Alternative staining methods have been developed for directly staining colonies (72) or growing bacteria on plates containing Nile blue A or Nile red (68,73), resulting in fluorescent colonies that can be visualized by UV illumination.…”

“…A wide range of taxonomically and physiologically different natural bacteria and some archae accumulate PHAs as storage reserve materials and deposit them as insoluble granules in the cytoplasm (10,11,69,70,83,84). After the discovery of PHB from the bacterium B. megaterium (18), over 300 different bacteria, including Gram-negative and -positive species, have been reported to accumulate various PHAs (11,28,83,86,87).…”

Optimization and Characterization of Poly[R]hydroxyalkanoates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

“…1). A similar study was done by Bhuwal et al, 18 who isolated PHA producing organism from cardboard manufacturing industry waste water.…”

Selection of filamentous fungi producing lipases from residual waters of slaughterhouses

“…By analyzing Table 1, one can see that bacteria are the predominant microorganisms in the slaughterhosue effluent, with 6.8 × 10 8 CFU.mL . This diversity can be seen as beneficial for the treatment process of these effluents because a greater diversity increases the biodegradation capacity of the effluents (Pereira, 2007;Bhuwal et al, 2013;Motiwalla et al, 2013).…”