Novel arsenic resistant bacterium Sporosarcina luteola M10 having potential bioremediation properties

Abstract

Arsenic (As) is a highly toxic element with great mobility in the environment. If present in high concentrations in soil as well as groundwater, it poses a threat to all living organisms. Although there are many remedial methods which mostly rely on adsorption and filtration, novel technologies using microorganisms are of great attention due to their efficient degradation properties and cost-effectiveness. The present study emphasizes on novel arsenic resistant bacterium which has been isolated from electronic waste contaminated soil samples of Mandoli area in Delhi NCR, India. The isolated bacterium, identified as Sporosarcina luteola through 16S rRNA gene sequencing is tolerant to high levels of arsenic oxyanions. This bacterium designated as Sporosarcina luteola M10 could tolerate arsenate (V) upto 0.2M and arsenite (III) upto 0.01M in minimal medium. The arsenic removal efficiency was 60% of arsenate and 55.5% of arsenite respectively from arsenic amended media at 72 h as detected by atomic absorption spectroscopy. arsC, arsB and aoxB genes encoding arsenate reductase of 280 bp, arsenite transporter of 750 bp and arsenite oxidase of 450 bp respectively were found to be present through PCR amplification of genomic DNA. This is the first report of Sporosarcina luteola extremely resistant to arsenic having potential bioremediation properties.