Two Bacterial Mixed Culture Systems Suitable for Degrading Terephthalate in Wastewater.

Abstract

Two different mixed cultures, which degrade terephthalate at 50 degrees C and pH 8, were isolated from a wastewater treatment plant. These were useful for the treatment of wastewater containing a high concentration of terephthalic acid (TPA). Each mixed culture included a TPA-degrading bacterium, strain K1 or Pseudomonas sp. C4S, and another bacterium unable to degrade TPA, the as-yet unclassified strain K3 or Bacillus sp. C4B. In axenic culture, K1 and C4S showed poor growth even in a medium supplemented with yeast extract and tryptone. On the other hand, when co-cultured with the co-isolate from the mixed culture which is unable to degrade TPA, the growth was enhanced. Moreover, several bacterial strains in our stock culture collection showed the ability to improve the growth of both TPA-degrading bacteria. A mixed culture of strains K1 and K3 exhibited rapid growth and TPA degradation in a chemically defined medium, suggesting that the mixed culture system would be applicable to the treatment of wastewater containing TPA.

Multi-strain co-cultures surpass blends for broad spectrum biological control of maladies of potatoes in storage

“…Although the performance benefits of co-cultivations to biocontrol performance have not previously been documented, mixed Pseudomonad cultivations (with other Pseudomonas sp. or other genera) have been documented for many other applications including, for example: single cell protein production from bagasse pith (Rodriguez and Gallardo 1993); degradation of terephthalate in wastewater (Kimura and Ito 2001); production of poly(hydroxyalkanoate) blends from glycerol (Ashby, Solaiman, and Foglia 2005); the enhancement of oil degradation by co-culture of hydrocarbon degrading and biosurfactant producing bacteria (Kumar, Leon, De Sisto Materano, and Ilzins 2006); and many others. More recently, Wu, Ma, Wang, Yang, and Lou (2009) examined the synergistic growth of a salt tolerant Pseudomonas fluorescens Rs-198 with another bacterium Rs-5 in co-culture that may have potential for application in fertilizer preparation.…”

Microbial degradation of disodium terephthalate by Rhodococcus sp. 9-003

“…The degradation rate slowed down after 96 h, this fact is probably related to the formation of intermediate degraded products and the temporary accumulation in culture medium under high concentration of DT [21,22]. Furthermore, the increasing in pH during the biodegradation can cause an inhibitory effect [2], and after maintaining the pH at 7.5 using phosphate potassium Table 1 Characteristics of strain 9-003. buffer with low concentration of DT, complete degradation can be observed. When the culture broth was analyzed on HPLC, two major peaks appeared at 6.7 and 7.0 min respectively (Fig.…”

“…Some synthetic organic compounds can be degraded by active sludge [2]. In recent years, the biological degradation of terephthalate has been of interest and ecofriendly processing of synthetic polymer in the fiber industry has been given much attention because of environmental pollution [3].…”

Identification of protoplast fusion strain Fhhh by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA

“…The yield of PTA increased greatly all over the world in the past decade and the wastewater resulted from PTA manufacturing process also received great concerns (Macarie et al 1992). Currently, the wastewater is usually handled by activated sludge process which is suited for treating wastewater containing a variety of substances (Kimura and Ito 2001). However, the treatment performance is not well by native bacteria due to the presence of aromatic pollutants (Zhang et al 2006b).…”