Isolation of a Nonylphenol-degrading Microbial Consortium

Nonylphenol (NP), which is well known as an endocrine disrupter, has been detected widely in untreated sewage or waste water streams. Given the necessity of discovering an eco-friendly method of degrading this toxic organic compound, this study was conducted to isolate NP-degrading microorganisms from the aqueous environment. NP-degrading microbes were isolated through NP-containing enrichment culture. Finally, a microbial consortium, SW-3, capable of degrading NP with high efficiency, was selected from the mixture sample. The microbial consortium SW-3 was able to degrade over 99% of 100 ppm NP in the culture medium for 40 days at $25^{\circ}C$ . The microbial consortium SW-3 seemed to utilize NP as a carbon source, since NP was the sole carbon source in the culture medium. In order to isolate the NP-degrading bacterium, we further conducted single colony isolation using the microbial consortium SW-3. Four strains isolated from SW-3 exhibited lower NP-degradation efficiency than that of SW-3, suggesting that NP was degraded by the co-metabolism of the microbial consortium. We suggest that the microbial consortium obtained in this study would be useful in developing an eco-friendly bioremediation technology for NP degradation.