A New Method for the Screening of Ureolytic Bacteria Inducing Calcium Carbonate Precipitation

Abstract

At present several studies are evaluating biological calcite precipitation as it has laid the concept of bioconcrete as a self-healing material which may be a green and more sustainable component for future architecture. This paper reports a 96 wells plate based rapid and easy method for the screening of urea hydrolyzing/calcite-precipitating bacteria. Arsenazo III was used as a colorimetric indicator in 96 wells plate assay. This method requires small amount of reagents and therefore was easy to manage. In this rapid, economic and reliable method that we have developed, Paenibacillus, a facultative anaerobe and Lysinibacillus, were screened as the most efficient bacteria in calcium carbonate precipitation among isolated urea hydrolyzing microbes or bacterial samples from the soil collected from Uttarakhand, India.