Mercury Bioremediation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa: in vitro insights

Since the last few decades, mercury pollution has posed serious health and environmental threats due to its long-term non-biodegradable nature. Bioremediation has the potential to address this concern. This study gives systematic in vitro insights into mercury bioremediation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The isolation of mercury-resistant bacterial isolates followed by their optimization to their maximum mercury removal ability, pH and temperature was conducted. Identification and characterization of bacterial isolate having maximum remediation capacity for mercury were conducted with the VITEK 2 compact system. The mercuric reductase enzyme assay was conducted to see the metabolic process of microbial bioremediation. Based on the standard method for identification and characterization, mercury-resistant bacterial isolate Hg-I3 was identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It was seen that among all the isolated bacteria, isolate Hg-I3 shows the highest potential i.e. 75.72% for mercury bioremediation. Enzyme Mercuric reductase activity was found to be 0.0827 units/ml at 30mins; the bioremediation process was found to increase with the increase in enzyme production. Optimization studies showed that pH (6.0) and temperature conditions (35°C) enhanced bioremediation. These findings underscore significance of microbial bioremediation in addressing mercury contamination and highlight the potential for further research and application in the field of sustainable environmental remediation.