Mercury-Resistant Marine Bacteria and their Role in Bioremediation of Certain Toxicants

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to isolate and enumerate mercury-resistant bacteria and to compare their occurrence and distribution spatially and temporally along the Indian coasts. As coastal waters experience adverse effects of a variety of toxic chemicals and salt concentration that may play a role in resistance mechanism in mercury-resistant marine bacteria, investigations were carried out to see whether marine MRB have different ways to deal with toxic mercury and to examine their genetic make-up. The hypothesis put forth for this study that bacterial strains capable of Hg resistance can also tolerate, detoxify or biotransform a variety of other toxicants was examined. Experiments were carried out to understand the potential of a select set of MRB to tolerate and/or biotransform polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tri-butyl tin (TBT), mercury, cadmium and lead to validate this hypothesis.