H. KHS3 Case Study

H. sp. KHS3 is a moderately halophilic bacteria isolated from hydrocarbon-contaminated seawater of the Mar del Plata harbour (D’Ippólito et al., 2011). In this work, we demonstrated that H. KHS3 can grow using different monoaromatic and polyaromatic compounds as the only carbon and energy source in a saline environment. Besides, we demonstrated for the first time the 4-HBA and BA degradation ability of H. sp. KHS3.
Several Halomonas strains have been described as efficient aromatic compounds degraders (Alva and Peyton, 2003; García et al. 2004; García et al., 2005; Oie et al., 2007; Dastgheib et al., 2012; Piubeli et al., 2012a, 2012b). For example, H. organivorans is characterized by its ability to use a wide range of organic compounds as the only carbon source including BA, 4-HBA and salicylic acid (García et al., 2004), which are also substrates for H. sp. KHS3. To our knowledge, most of the studies on Halomonas sp. focused on degradation of monoaromatic rather than polycyclic and heterocyclic compounds. We have demonstrated that H. sp. KHS3 has the ability to growth using phenanthrene, fluorene and naphthalene as the only carbon source. Similar ability has been demonstrated by
When analyzing the kinetic parameters, the optimal 4-HBA concentrations for the isolate growth were between 50 and 100 mg l-1 of substrate (as Erdogmus et al, (2013) reported), with a generation time of approximately 6 h. Although, the H. sp. KHS3 cell concentration increased until 200 mg l-1 of 4-HBA, Erdogmus et al. (2013) found strains not able to growth at 200 mg l-1 of 4-HBA. In our work, a cell growth inhibition was observed with 200 mg l-1 of BA, and Oie et al. (2007) not detected an inhibition up to 380 mg