Biodegradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phenol and sodium sulfate by Nocardia species isolated and characterized from Iranian ecosystems

Abstract

AbstractAnthropogenic pollutants are known to have adverse effect on ecosystem, biodiversity and human health. Bioremediation is an option that has been widely used to remediate organic contaminants and reduce the risk of these hazardous materials. Microorganisms are readily available to screen and can be rapidly characterized to be applied in many extreme environmental conditions. Actinomycetes have a great potential for the production of bioactive secondary metabolites which have biodegradation activity. This study aimed to screen and characterizeNocardiaspecies with biodegradation potential from diverse Iranian ecosystems. The isolates were screened from 90 collected environmental samples, identified and characterized using conventional and molecular microbiological methods including the PCR amplification and sequencing analysis of 16S rRNA andrpoB genetic markers. Growth rate in presence of pollutants, chromatography, Gibbs and turbidometric methods were used to determine bioremediation ability. A total of 19Nocardiaisolates were recovered from the cultured samples (21.1%) that belonged to 10 various species. The most prevalentNocardiaspecies wasN. farcinica; 4 isolates (21%), followed byN. cyriacigeorgica and N. cashijiensislike; 3 isolates each (15.7%) andN. asteroidesandN. kroppenstedtii; 2 isolates each (10.5%). Our results showed that variousNocardiaspecies have great potential for bioremediation purposes, although they have not received much attention of the scholars for such significant usage.