Isolation and Identification of Moderately Halophilic Bacteria Producing Hydrolytic Enzymes from the Largest Hypersaline Playa in Iran

Iran has many hypersaline environments, both the permanent and seasonal ones. One of the sea sonal hypersaline lakes in the central desert zone is AranBidgol Lake in which microbial diversity has not been characterized, thus the potential usage of this microbial community in biotechnology remained unknown. In this study, screening the halophilic hydrolytic enzymeproducing bacteria from different areas of this lake led to isolation of 61 grampositive and 22 gramnegative moderately halophilic bacteria. These bacterial isolates were shown to produce a wide variety of hydrolytic enzymes including DNase, inulinase, amylase, lipase, pectinase, protease, chitinase, pullulanase, cellulase, and xylanase. The most common enzymes were DNase and inulinase in grampositive bacteria, lipase in gramnegative bacteria, and pullula nase and cellulase in grampositive cocci. Interestingly, combined hydrolytic activates were observed in some isolates. According to their phenotypic characteristics and comparative partial 16S rRNA sequence analysis, the moderately halophilic strains belonged to the genera Halobacillus, Thalassobacillus, Bacillus, Salinicoc cus, Idiomarina, Salicola, and Halomonas.

moderate halophiles, hydrolytic enzymes, hypersaline lake