Journal of Environmental Biology

Effect of lead on growth, protein and biosorption capacity of

Bacillus cereus isolated from industrial effluent

Shruti Murthy¹*, Geetha Bali² and S.K. Sarangi³

¹Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Bangalore University, Bangalore - 560 056, India

²Karnataka State Women's University, Bijapur - 586 101, India

³Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Bangalore University, Bangalore - 560 056, India

*Corresponding Author E-mail: murthy.shruti@gmail.com

Publication Data

Paper received:

06 March 2012

Revised received:

19 November 2012

Re-Revised received:

29 April 2013

Accepted:

25 June 2013

Abstract

A bacterial strain (Bacillus cereus) with the ability to grow under conditions of high concentrations of lead was isolated from the industrial effluent collected from Peenya Industrial Area, Bangalore. The effect of lead on growth, protein content and lead biosorption capacity of Bacillus cereus was investigated. The results revealed that with increase in lead concentration (100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 mg l-1) there was a decrease in growth, protein content (10.6, 8.2, 6.7, 3.8 and 1.9 mg g-1 d. wt.) and lead biosorption ( 90.3, 57.8, 48.94, 31.3 and 22.24 %) Bacillus cereus, signifying toxic effect of lead on the bacterial strain. Plasmid DNA was isolated from Bacillus cereus to study its resistance mechanism. The size of the plasmid was approximately 33kb. Transformation results suggest that lead resistance gene may be present on the chromosomal DNA rather than the plasmid DNA as the transformants did not show lead resistance.?

 Key words

Bacillus cereus, Industrial effluent, Lead biosorption, Plasmid DNA

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