Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolated from gasoline-contaminated soil is capable of degrading methyl tert-butyl ether

Background: Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is a pollutant that causes deleterious effects on human and environmental health. Certain microbial cultures have shown the ability to degrade MTBE, suggesting that a novel bacterial species capable of degrading MTBE could be recovered. The goal of this study was to isolate, identify and characterize the members of a bacterial consortium capable of degrading MTBE. Results: The IPN-120526 bacterial consortium was obtained through batch enrichment using MTBE as the sole carbon and energy source. The cultivable fraction of the consortium was identified; of the isolates, only Stenotrophomonas maltophilia IPN-TD and Sphingopyxis sp. IPN-TE were capable of degrading MTBE. To the best of our knowledge, this report is the first demonstrating that S. maltophilia and Sphingopyxis sp. are capable of degrading MTBE. The degradation kinetics of MTBE demonstrated that S. maltophilia IPN-TD had a significantly higher overall MTBE degradation efficiency and rate (48.39 ± 3.18% and 1.56 ± 0.12 mg L-1 h-1, respectively) than the IPN-120526 consortium (38.59 ± 2.17% and 1.25 ± 0.087 mg L-1 respectively). The kinetics of MTBE removal by both cultures fit first-order and pseudo-first-order reaction models. Conclusions: These findings suggest that S. maltophilia IPN-TD in axenic culture has considerable potential for the detoxification of MTBE-contaminated water.

Compositional studies and Biological activities of Perovskia abrotanoides Kar. oils

BACKGROUND: Current study has been designed to evaluate the chemical composition of essential and fixed oils from stem and leaves of Perovskia abrotanoides and antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of these oils. RESULTS: GC-MS analysis of essential oil identified 19 compounds with (E)-9-dodecenal being the major component in stem and hexadecanoic acid in leaves. In contrast, GC-MS analysis of fixed oil showed 40 constituents with α-amyrin the major component in stem and α-copaene in leaves. The antioxidant activity showed the highest value of 76.7% in essential oil from leaves in comparison with fixed oil from stem (45.9%) through inhibition of peroxidation in linoleic acid system. The antimicrobial assay tested on different microorganisms (e.g. E. coli, S. aureus, B. cereus, Nitrospira, S. epidermis, A. niger, A. flavus and C. albicans) showed the higher inhibition zone at essential oil from leaves (15.2 mm on B. cereus) as compared to fixed oil from stem (8.34 mm onS. aureus) and leaves (11.2 mm on S. aureus). CONCLUSIONS: The present study revealed the fact that essential oil analyzed from Perovskia abrotanoides stem and leaves could be a promising source of natural products with potential antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, as compared to fixed oil.