Role of Bacillus Subtilis in Bioremediation of Heavy Metals

-Bioremediation is the application of biological process principles to the treatment of groundwater, soil and sludge contaminated with hazardous chemicals. It requires the control and manipulation of microbial processes in surface reactors or in the subsurface. Of prime importance, microorganisms are capable of producing enzymes that will degrade the hazardous chemical (target compound) as enzymes degrade compounds through exploitation of the organism’s energy need. Attempts were made to study the acclimated microorganism as Bacillus subtilis isolated from industrial effluent soil to grow and concentrate metals from different concentrations of Manganese, Lead and Cadmium containing medium. Well defined growth of microorganism was observed in the medium containing different concentrations (50 μg/ml, 100 μg/ml, 150 μg/ml, 200 μg/ml and 250 μg/ml.) of Manganese, Lead and Cadmium, respectively. The maximum uptake was observed on cell growth with 200 μg/ml concentration and further increase in the metal concentration was found to decrease uptake.