Characterization of Nickel Tolerant Bacteria Isolated from Heavy Metal Polluted Glass Industry for its Potential Role in Bioremediation

Heavy metal contamination of the environment is a serious concern because of their deleterious effects on biological systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation on isolation of heavy metal resistant bacteria from contaminated sites of glass industrial area.

The study focused on isolation and characterization of Ni²⁺ resistant bacteria from these sites and analysis of their Ni²⁺ accumulation potential. Out of 38 different bacterial isolates 3 bacteria were able to tolerate up to 24 mM Ni²⁺ concentration. These bacterial strains were identified as E. coli (AS17b), Escherichia coli (AS21) and Microbacterium sp. (AS33) by 16S rRNA (16S ribosomal RNA) sequencing and their basic local alignment search tool search analysis. Growing cell of E. coli and Microbacterium sp. revealed accumulation of 0.12, 0.08 and 0.06 µg, of Ni²⁺/mg dry weight of cells, respectively, by 72 hr. Similarly resting cell of these strains showed accumulation of 0.27, 0.11 and 0.08 µg of Ni²⁺/mg dry weight of cells by 150 min, respectively. These results reveal that strain E. coli (AS21) shows maximum accumulation efficiency for Ni²⁺ among different isolates studied under shaking as well as starving conditions. Hence, E. coli (AS21) could serve as an efficient and promising bacterium for bioremediation of nickel-contaminated sites.