Full Length Research Paper

Influence of pH, temperature and glucose on biodegradation of 4-aminophenol by a novel bacterial strain, Pseudomonas sp. ST-4

Sumera Afzal Khan^1#, Muhammad Hamayun^2#, Abdul Latif Khan², Bashir Ahmad¹, Safia Ahmed³ and In-Jung Lee²*

¹Center of Biotechnology and Microbiology, University of Peshawar, Pakistan

²School of Applied Biosciences, Kyungpook National University, Korea

³Department of Microbiology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan

⁴Kohat University of Science & Technology, Kohat Pakistan

*Corresponding author. E- mail: ijlee@knu.ac.kr. Tel.: +82-53-950-5708.

Fax: +82-53-950-6880.

#These authors contributed equally to this paper

Accepted 17 April, 2009

Aromatic compounds such as 4-aminophenol are toxic to the environment and thus should be eliminated effectively. Biodegradation of aromatic compounds is an efficient and environment friendly technique as addition of selected microbes does not add any kind of pollutants and actively remove even the most recalcitrant pollutants. We investigated the effectiveness of Pseudomonas sp. strain ST-4 in the biodegradation of 4-aminophenol under variable pH, temperature and glucose regimes and sorted out optimum conditions for maximum biodegradation of 4-aminophenol. Maximum biodegradation of 4-aminophenol by Pseudomonas sp. strain ST- 4 was observed at pH 8, temperature 30°C and glucose concentration of 15 mM at 72 h, respectively.

Key words: Biodegradation, 4-aminophenol, Pseudomonas sp. ST-4, pH, temperature, glucose.