How microscopy techniques can contribute to understand bacterial responses to environmental pollutants?

FERNANDEZ M; AGOSTINI E; MORALES, GUSTAVO M.; GONZALEZ PS

La Plata

Workshop; Imaging Techniques for Biotechnology and Biomedical Applications Workshop; 2016

Facultad de Ciencias Exactas de la UNLP y École Polytechnique de Lausanne, Suiza

Several industrial operations released highly dangerous inorganic and organic compounds such as Cr(VI) and phenol into the environment. Both compounds are listed as priority pollutants by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) due to their toxicity and persistence. The great ability of indigenous microorganisms for biotransformation of toxic compounds is of considerable interest for the emerging area of environmental bioremediation. For this reason, we isolated a bacterial strain from tannery sediments, which was identified as Acinetobacter guillouiae SFC 500-1A able to simultaneously remove high Cr(VI) and phenol concentrations. In this work we studied the effect of Cr(VI) and/or phenol on A. guillouiae SFC 500-1A analyzing morphological changes.