Microbial populations from subsurface soil collected from a hydrocarbon contaminated site and a pristine site with no history of contamination had the ability to degrade pentachlorophenol (PCP) in anaerobic enrichment cultures. Increasing concentrations of PCP in nitrate, sulfate and yeast extract-mineral salts media were used to acclimate the cultures. Nitrate enrichments, previously incubated in an anaerobic phenol-mineral salts medium, showed 23% degradation in medium containing 40 μg ml⁻¹ PCP during a 32 d incubation period. Cultures not adapted to phenol degradation did not degrade PCP at concentrations over 20 μg ml⁻¹. Enrichment cultures grown in the anaerobic yeast extract-mineral salts medium did not degrade PCP at concentrations over 20 μg ml⁻¹ and phenol adaptation did not enhance PCP degradation. The sulfate reducing enrichment containing 1 μg ml⁻¹ PCP showed 71.3% degradation after 32 d incubation. No degradation occurred at or above 5 μg ml⁻¹ PCP. PCP intermediates, 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP) and 3,4,5 TCP were found in the spent culture of the nitrate reducing enrichment. In the spent culture of the sulfate reducing enrichment, 3,4,5 TCP and 2,3,4,5-tetrachlorophenol were found. Attempts to obtain a pure culture of an anaerobic PCP degrading bacterium were unsuccessful. / Master of Science
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/54376 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Baranow, Steven A. |
| Contributors | Microbiology |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | vii, 54 leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 20347940 |
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