Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi 70 (5), 687-692 (2004)

Pyrene decomposing yeasts collected from sea water of Tokyo Bay

HUIFENG REN,1 SATOSHI ZANMA,1 NAOTO URANO,1
HIDEAKI ENDO,1 SHIGERU MINEKI2 AND TETSUHITO HAYASHI1*

1Department of Ocean Science, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, 2Department of Applied Biological Science, Tokyo University of Science, Noda, Chiba 278-8510, Japan

Microbes which degrade pyrene, one of the major poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), were searched for in seawater of Tokyo Bay as the first step of bioremediation for PAHs in the marine environment. The isolated microbes were classified to be yeasts, Dekkera bruxellensis and Candida sp., by a series of physiological identification tests. Pyrene (4 μg/mL suspension, 50 times as much pyrene of saturated concentration to the media) was degraded to 38% in 5 weeks in an open system. On the other hand, pyrene concentration in the control (cells were autoclaved) stayed at exactly the same level in a closed system in 5 weeks, and decreased to 68% in the open system in the same time period. From these experimental results it can be concluded that the difference in pyrene concentration in the open system with and without yeasts (30% of original concentration) showed the amount degraded by yeasts.The degradation rate of the yeasts was calculated as 1.4-4.0×10−9 μg/CFU·h−1.


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