About the project

Approximately only 1% of extant bacteria on Earth can be cultivated in vitro. Although cultivation-independent molecular microbiological methods became widely applied in the assessment of complex microbial communities in the last decades, the full characterization of physiological properties is possible only via isolated strains. Additionally, new bacterial strains may be directly or indirectly applied in industrial processes, e.g. particular bacterial enzymes may be utilized in biotechnological processes, or the biodegradation of contaminants in groundwater or wastewater could be enhanced with the addition of a bulk of isolated and enriched bacteria.
Therefore the proposed project has the following aims:

1. isolation of new bacterial strains from extreme and/or polluted habitats using innovative cultivation strategies (the retrieval of such isolates will be supported with cultivation-independent methods),
2. testing the biodegradation potential of the retrieved isolates in the case of phenolic compounds (with a special focus on bisphenol A), and
3. modeling the application of bacterial cultures in wastewater treatment and bioremediation processes using a laboratory-scale system.

The project is supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI (contract nr: 40/30.04.2013), project number PN-II-RU-TE-2012-3-0319.