Isolation and Characterization of Haloarchaeal Strain from Puthalam Salt Pan located in the Southern Peninsular Coast of India

Abstract

Halophiles are salt loving organisms that inhabit hypersaline environments. They possess the potential to provide significant opportunities for pharmacology. Moreover, by the concentration of seawater in arid environments, hypersaline environments may easily be created. These facts, along with the presence of novel and stable biomolecules in halophilic bacteria and Archaea, suggest that these microorganisms will prove even more treasured in coming. In the present investigation, water samples were collected from three different sites of Puthalam salt pan. The samples were aseptically transported to the laboratory and subjected to serial dilution using sea water. Among that 10-6 dilution was taken for the study. 3 different coloured colonies were observed on Zobell marine agar plates, incubated at 37°C for 12 days whereas red coloured colony was taken for further study such as biochemical characterization, pH and temperature optima, halophilicity, growth in the presence of various carbon, N2 as well as inorganic sources and various organic solvents. The observed results indicated that the strain is a red coloured, motile, gram negative rod with evenly spreaded colonies. It shows positive results with catalase, oxidase, gelatin liquefaction, starch hydrolysate, casein production, glucose, sucrose, dextrose and mannitol tests. The isolate shows its well established growth at pH 8.8, temperature 42°C and NaCl of 29% (excluding the media salinity). It utilizes wide range of carbon, N2 and inorganic sources as well as organic solvents for its growth. The isolate was identified as Halomonas utahensis by 16S rRNA sequencing. The nucleotide sequence was submitted to Gen Bank and assigned the accession number KY986725.