Volume 6 • Issue 4 • 1000303 J Bioremed Biodeg ISSN: 2155-6199 JBRBD, an open access journal Research Article Open Access El Mahdi et al., J Bioremed Biodeg 2015, 6:4 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2155-6199.1000303 Research Article Open Access Bioremediation & Biodegradation ISSN: 2155-6199 J o u r n a l o f B i o r e m e d i a ti o n & B i o d e g r a d a t i o n Keywords: Isolation; Identiication; 16S Rdna; Biodegradation; Crude oil; SWD Introduction he ocean and other water bodies have captured the imagination of people for thousands of years. Most of the life forms exist mostly in these water bodies and therefore, speciic laws, and regulations have been framed to protect this delicate marine environment. It is also the major source of food chain and is known for diversity of aquatic species [1,2]. Marine oil pollution occurs when any organic or toxic chemical substances enter the sea water. hese chemical hazards can lead to severe pollution of the system either for short duration or over long period of time. Primarily it afects the biological process thereby damaging the marine life cycle. Most common causes of marine pollution are due to oil spill occurring at sea. hese oil spills deteriorate the marine environment to such an extent that, it destroys the existing ecosystem accordingly afecting the bio diversity and human wellbeing [3-5]. he oil spill results in signiicant changes in its physical and chemical structure [6,7]. he photolysis of oil can result in the formation of many byproducts such as the aromatic oxygenated compounds, aliphatic, benzoic and naphthanoic acids, alcohols, phenols and aliphatic ketones [8,9]. In Libya, 5 oil terminal facilities and many diferent operating companies are discharging eluents at risk rate. Oil pollution presents the hazard along parts of the Libyan Marine Coast where Oil Industries are located. his severely afects ecosystem. With the focus on the protection of environment and pollution control in Libya, most of the terminal facilities with the conventional ballast water process are likely to face a serious threat in coming years and need has been felt for a safe, environmental friendly process which eliminates the use of discharging of ballast water into sea. At present, bioremediation use of microorganisms to remove pollutants is oten the most suitable method for remediation of especially petroleum hydrocarbons, because it is cost-efective and, it converts the petroleum hydrocarbons into the harmless by-products such as carbon dioxide and water [10,11]. Various microbial populations, including Bacteria, Fungi and Algae can metabolize the hydrocarbons found in crude oil. In literature, bacterium was considered to be the most important group of petroleum degrading organisms because its allow adaptation to various environments, have a rich taxonomic, metabolic, physiological, and it has more rapid metabolic rates. Moreover, bacteria can be genetically manipulated to improve their bioremediation capabilities [12,13]. here are at least 175 genera of bacteria that can metabolize petroleum hydrocarbons, which include- Pseudomonas, Aeromonas, Bacillus, Flavobacterium, Corynebacterium, Micrococcus etc. [14]. Based on crude oil degradation capacity, Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most active hydrocarbon utilize in crude oil. Previous observations have identiied the Pseudomonas genus most eicient among hydrocarbon degrading microorganisms [15-17]. Further use of surfactants has been found to enhance degradation of crude oil [18,19]. Among various surfactants, rhamnolipids are considered to be the most eicient way in degrading hydrocarbons [20-22]. Most studies reported the efectiveness of using consortium bacterium compared with the single strain bacteria. Single strain is still not efective in terms of biodegradability. Both consortium and single strains reported limited performance when used in high crude oil concentration. he isolated Kocuria sp. from contaminated water by crude oil was recently received attention in crude oil biodegradation [23]. However, the success of their production depends on the increase of yield, the development of economic biotechnology processes, and the use of low cost efective renewable agro-industrial substrates for their production. However, the performance of employing SWD and CSL as a low-cost material to enhance single strain bacteria in removing highly contaminated crude oil was not well investigated. he aim of this *Corresponding author: Prof. Hamidi Abdul Aziz, School of Civil Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia, Tel: + 60-45996215; Fax: +60-45941009; E-mail: cehamidi@eng.usm.my Received June 09, 2015; Accepted July 06, 2015; Published July 08, 2015 Citation: El Mahdi AM, Aziz HA, Abu Am SS, El-Gendy NS, Nassar H (2015) Performance of Isolated Kocuria sp. SAR1 in Light Crude Oil Biodegradation. J Bioremed Biodeg 6: 303. doi:10.4172/2155-6199.1000303 Copyright: © 2015 El Mahdi AM, et al. This is an open-a ccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Performance of Isolated Kocuria sp. SAR1 in Light Crude Oil Biodegradation Abdullah M. El Mahdi 1 , Hamidi Abdul Aziz 1,2 *, Salem S Abu Am 1 , Nour Sh. El-Gendy 3 and Hussein Nassar 3 1 School of Civil Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 NibongTebal, Penang, Malaysia 2 Solid Waste Management Cluster, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Penang, Malaysia 3 Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, Nasr City, Cairo 11727, Egypt Abstract In the current study; Kocuria sp. SAR1 was isolated from ‘Tobruk Reinery’ oil water pit, located along the eastern coast of Libya. The isolated bacterial strain SAR1 was characterized as an aerobic, Gram +ve, spherical-shaped, oxidase – but catalase +. Phenotypic characters and phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene of the isolate SAR1 showed that it was related to members of the Kocuria genus. The alignment of the 16S rRNA gene sequences of SAR1 with sequences obtained by doing a Blast searching revealed 96% similarity to Kocuria palustris strain TAGA27. Solid waste dates (SWD) and corn steep liquor (CSL) as agro-industrial products were performed to enhance the performance of Kocuria sp. SAR1 in crude oil biodegradation. During bacterial growth, high emulsifying activity to the presence of cells was observed, which is concluding the production of bio surfactant by strain SAR1. The bacterial strain showed removal eficiency of 68% and 70% of crude oil in 28 days when cultivated with 0.2% (w/v) of CSL and SWD, respectively. Crude oil metabolizing bacterium can secrete surfactants using agro industrial as substrates, which further enhance the hydrocarbon degradation.