Isolation of a Nonylphenol-degrading Microbial Consortium

• DOI: 10.5657/kfas.2011.0325
• Publication Date: 2011-11-09T09:08:38Z
• Authors: Won Song; Keun-Sick Lim; Dae-Ung Yu; Mi-Eun Park; Eun-Tak Jeong; Dong-Myung Kim; Yong-Hyun Chung; Young-Mog Kim
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; 6. Clean water

Nonylphenol (NP), which is well known as an endocrine disrupter, has been detected widely in untreated sewage or waste water streams. Given the necessity of discovering an eco-friendly method of degrading this toxic organic compound, this study was conducted to isolate NP-degrading microorganisms from the aqueous environment. NP-degrading microbes were isolated through NP-containing enrichment culture. Finally, a microbial consortium, SW-3, capable of degrading NP with high efficiency, was selected from the mixture sample. The microbial consortium SW-3 was able to degrade over 99% of 100 ppm NP in the culture medium for 40 days at . The microbial consortium SW-3 seemed to utilize NP as a carbon source, since NP was the sole carbon source in the culture medium. In order to isolate the NP-degrading bacterium, we further conducted single colony isolation using the microbial consortium SW-3. Four strains isolated from SW-3 exhibited lower NP-degradation efficiency than that of SW-3, suggesting that NP was degraded by the co-metabolism of the microbial consortium. We suggest that the microbial consortium obtained in this study would be useful in developing an eco-friendly bioremediation technology for NP degradation.