Abstract
Two bacterial consortia growing on a random copolymer of ethylene glycol and propylene glycol units were obtained by enrichment cultures from various microbial samples. Six major strains included in both consortia were purified and identified as Sphingomonads, Pseudomonas sp. and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. Three of them (Sphingobium sp. strain EK-1, Sphingopyxis macrogoltabida strain EY-1, and Pseudomonas sp. strain PE-2) utilized both PEG and polypropylene glycol (PPG) as a sole carbon source. Four PEG-utilizing bacteria had PEG dehydrogenase (PEG-DH) activity, which was induced by PEG. PCR products from DNA of these bacteria generated with primers designed from a PEG-DH gene (AB196775 for S. macrogoltabida strain 103) indicated the presence of a sequence that is the homologous to the PEG-DH gene (99% identity). On the other hand, five PPG-utilizing bacteria had PPG dehydrogenase (PPG-DH) activity, but the activity was constitutive. PCR of a PPG-DH gene was performed using primers designed from a polyvinyl alcohol dehydrogenase (PVA-DH) gene (AB190288 for Sphingomonas sp. strain 113P3) because a PPG-DH gene has not been cloned yet, but both PPG-DH and PVA-DH were active toward PPG and PVA (Mamoto et al. 2006). PCR products of the five strains did not have similarity to each other or to oxidoreductases including PVA-DH.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to technical advice of Drs. A. Tani and Xin Liu, Research Institute for Bioresources, Okayama University. This work was financially supported in part by Grant-In-Aid For Scientific Research (C) 14560068 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. We are also grateful to grants to F. Kawai from the Wesco Scientific Promotion Foundation and the Yakumo Foundation for Environmental Science.
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Hu, X., Fukutani, A., Liu, X. et al. Isolation of bacteria able to grow on both polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polypropylene glycol (PPG) and their PEG/PPG dehydrogenases. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 73, 1407–1413 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-006-0616-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-006-0616-y