The growth of mercury-resistant bacterial consortium at different levels of pH, temperature, and C:N ratio

Abstract

Abstract The study was conducted to investigate the growth of mercury-resistant bacterial consortium under the influence of different pHs, temperatures, and C:N ratios, as a part of mercury bioremediation research. The consortium consisted of five bacterial isolates selected due to their resistance to HgCl2 up to 100 ppm and was proven to effectively reduce mercury from the culture media. Consortium suspension was inoculated into two sets of media: 1) Tryptic soy broth (TSB) with pHs of 4.8, 6.1, 8.5, and 9.7; 2) Mineral salt with the addition of glucose and peptone to create C:N ratios of 20:1, 30:1, and 40:1 while the pH was set to 7.4. For comparison, a solution containing mercury-contaminated soil was added to the same set of media and regarded as a microbial community. The growth curves show that the bacterial consortium tended to grow better compared to the microbial community, especially in the TSB medium at incubation temperatures of 20 and 35 °C. In the same medium at a temperature of 45 °C, the growth of both consortium and community under high pHs (8.5 and 9.7) was higher than the one under lower pHs (4.8 and 6.1). Meanwhile, in the mineral salt medium, the influence of the inoculant was not remarkable except under an incubation temperature of 35 °C. Moreover, the C:N ratio did not affect the growth of either the bacterial consortium or the microbial community (p > 0.05). The variance analysis also indicated that the growths were significantly different only when the pH was 4.8.