Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4, 350352, 2008
http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/jsme2/ doi:10.1264/jsme2.ME08105
Short Communication
Isolation and Characterization of Aerobic Thermophilic Bacteria from the
Savusavu Hot Springs in Fiji
VINAY V. NARAYAN1, MOHAMED A. HATHA1,2, HUGH W. MORGAN3, and DHANA RAO1*
1Division
of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the South Pacific, Fiji;
of Marine Biology, Microbiology & Biochemistry, School of Marine Sciences, Cochin University
of Science & Technology, Cochin682 016 Kerala, India; and 3Division of Biological Sciences, Thermophile
Research Unit, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
2Department
(Received March 25, 2008Accepted July 28, 2008Published online October 1, 2008)
The relative isolation and unique physical properties of the Savusavu Hot Springs in Fiji may yield unique thermophiles. This study was conducted to determine the presence of aerobic thermophilic bacteria in these hot springs. A
total of 104 thermophilic bacterial isolates were characterized and using Thermus and Bacillus strains as controls,
58% of the isolates were identified as Anoxybacillus flavithermus, 19% as Geobacillus stearothermophilus/Bacillus
licheniformis, 10% as Thermus sp. TG153 and 10% as Thermus sp. TG206. Four isolates were unique in their molecular patterns suggesting there may be novel bacteria in the Savusavu hot springs.
Key words: Hot Springs, thermophilic bacteria, novel bacteria, hydrolytic enzymes, 16S rDNA
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Sampling
Date
Avg. load of
Thermophilic
SD of
Bacteria
cfu values
1
(cfu mL ) n=3
September
2005
November
2005
January
2006
March
2006
Table 2.
Temp. of
pool water
(C)
pH of
pool water
960
1.6
60.5
7.0
1260
3.2
63.0
7.5
12200
6.6
70.0
6.5
21600
5.3
73.0
6.5
Characteristics
Morphological:
Gram positive
Gram negative
Gram variable
Endospore producers
Endospore absent
Motile
Immotile
Biochemical:
Catalase positive
Catalase negative
Oxidative
Fermentative
Physiological:
Amylase producers
Amylase negative
Lipase producers
Gelatinase producers
Percentage
76.9
19.2
3.8
51
49
71.2
28.8
86.5
13.5
59.6
4.04
81.7
16.3
11.5
23.1
NARAYAN et al.
352