ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Sheeja Leela1, Jayappriyan Kothilmozhian Ranishree2* , Ramesh Kannan Perumal2 and Rengasamy Ramasamy2
1Shrimathi Devkunvar Nanalal Bhatt Vaishnav College for Women, Chromepet, Chennai – 600 044, India.
2Centre for Advanced Studies in Botany, University of Madras, Gundy Campus, Chennai – 600 025, India.
J Pure Appl Microbiol, 2019, 13 (2): 1227-1234 | Article Number: 5588
Received: 02/04/2019 | Accepted: 20/05/2019 | Published: 28/06/2019
Abstract

Biomineralization phenomenon of bacteria proved to have various biotechnological and environmental applications. Production of magnesium ammonium phosphate (struvite) crystals by the agarolytic bacterium Exiguobacterium aestuarii St. SR 101 isolated from red seaweed, Gracilaria corticata was reported for the first time in the present study. Struvite crystallization occurred in the agar culture medium in the presence of the bacterium. Crystal nucleation and growth occurred apparently as a consequence of the localized ion supersaturation, produced by the microbial metabolites and also by the microbial supply of heterogeneous nuclei resulted in crystallization. The crystals were visible between 10 to 15 days after inoculation. The crystal structure of the struvite characterized by optical microscopy, IR spectroscopy, thermogravimetry, powder X-ray diffractometry, and single crystal X-ray diffractometry. The orthorhombic crystal is with the space group Pmn21 and unit-cell parameters a = 6.9447 Å, b =6.1329 Å, c = 11.2026Å. Exiguobacterium aestuarii St. SR 101 showed to have the capacity of producing struvite based fertilizer by bioremediation of industrial phosphate wastes.

Keywords

Exiguobacterium aestuarii; biomineralization; struvite; agarolytic; X-ray diffractometry.

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© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.