Abstract
Tuz Lake is a hypersaline lake located in Central Anatolia, Turkey. The lake and its salterns, Kaldirim and Kayacik, are the major sources of solar salt for industrial applications in Turkey, especially in the food and leather industries. Use of the crude solar salt often results in microbial deterioration of the products. We therefore initiated a thorough characterization of the microbial communities in Tuz Lake and its adjacent salterns, and we present here the results of investigations on diversity of extremely halophilic Archaea. Twenty-seven colonies of aerobic red or pink Archaea (family Halobacteriaceae) were selected according to colony shape, size, consistency and pigmentation, and characterized according to their phenotypic characteristics, polar lipid contents, and antibiotic sensitivities. Furthermore, 16S rRNA genes of the isolates were screened by DGGE analysis and partially sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis showed that most isolates belonged to the genera Haloarcula, Halorubrum and Halobacterium. Haloarcula was found to be dominant both in Tuz Lake and in the saltern samples. Halorubrum species were isolated from Tuz Lake and from the Kaldirim saltern, and Halobacterium species were recovered from Tuz Lake and from the Kayacik saltern. All strains showed various activities of hydrolytic enzymes (proteases, amylases, cellulases, and others), activities which are responsible for the detrimental effects of the crude salt in food and leather products.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 309-316 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2007 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements This work was partially supported by the Scientific Research Project Commission of Marmara University, Project No: 2005 FEN BSE-072/171001. We thank the Scientific Research Project Commission and the Center for Wild Plants and Water Products of Marmara University for supporting this research. Assistant Prof. Yasar Birbir, Assistant Prof. Musa. Sahin Ugur and Mr. Yemilhan Atilgan are acknowledged for supply of the samples. We express our appreciation to Mr. Hüseyin C¸ imen, Mrs. Didem Berber, Miss Selc¸en Durmaz and Miss Hüsniye Hacioglu for their assistance. We thank also Sigma Co. (St Louis, USA) for donating the lipid detection spray reagents.
Keywords
- Halophilic Archaea
- Kaldirim saltern
- Kayacik saltern
- Tuz Lake