Isolation of microbes for the bioaugmentation of pollutants from river water samples

Abstract

A wide range of chemical pollutants occur in rivers, several of which may impair human health severely. The
objectives of this study were the isolation, identification and characterization of xenobiotic-degrading microbes from ten different locations of the Romanian and Hungarian parts of River Maros in an
international collaboration. High bacterial and fungal diversity was revealed by RISA (ribosomal intergenic
spacer analysis) studies. Microbes were isolated from the water samples on media containing 1 mg/ml
acetanilide, aniline-HCl, 2,6-dimethylaniline, 4-isopropylaniline, chlorpropham, diuron, Na-benzoate, 3,4-
dihydroxybenzoate, 4-hydroxybenzoate, methylparaben, phenol, m-cresol, p-cresol, resorcinol, phenoxiacetic
acid and 2,4-dichlorophenoxiacetic acid separately. The isolates were deposited in the Pollutant-Degrading
Microorganism Collection (PDMC) of the University of Szeged. The degradation of acetanilide was
monitored by spectrophotometry and the three best degraders were all identified as Rhodococcus
erythropolis. The xenobiotic-degrading microbes isolated in this study might be used for bioaugmentation
purposes.