Biodiversity of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, dominant species, present in mud volcanoes of the southeastern bank of Caspian Sea

Any point at which over time, the earth continuously exudes a mud-like substance, may sometimes be referred to as a "mud volcano". The mud produced by mud volcanoes is often a slurry of fine solids suspended in liquids which may include water, which is frequently acidic or salty, and hydrocarbon fluids. Mud volcanoes in the southeastern bank of the Caspian Sea and the North Eastern of Golestan province of the country are among the most important of mud volcanoes in Iran and therefore, were microbiologically examined. In this study biodiversity of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, dominant species, was investigated.
Material and In order to investigate the microbial diversity of the mud volcanoes the samples were cultured in aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The common culture media were used for cultivating aerobic bacteria whereas the thioglycollate broth were used to culture anaerobic bacteria. In addition to study the halophilic trait, hydrolase enzymes and physiological characteristics of the isolates were evaluated.
Among all of the isolates twenty strains were selected for further study from which 15 strains were aerobes and 5 strains were facultative anaerobes. Most isolates were gram positive bacilli that are capable of producing hydrolases. These enzymes have potential applications in biotechnology. All isolates were able to grow in medium containing 0-15% NaCl and considered as the salt tolerant. In order to identify the facultative anaerobes, following polymerase chain reactions the sequencing and blast steps were done.
Discussion and A BLAST search enabled us to compare the 16S rRNA sequences of the strains with a database of sequences the homology study showed that the strains Akh.1, Akh.2, Akh.3, Akh.4 and Akh.5 share homology with Bacillus niacin (99.61%) and Clostridium bifermentas (99.74%), Proteiniborus ethanoligenes (94.9%), Clostridium ultunense (95.7%) and Clostridium methylpentosum (91.14%), respectively.