Isolation of Leclercia adcarboxglata Strain JLS1 from Dolostone Sample and Characterization of its Induced Struvite Minerals

ABSTRACT

The biomineralization of struvites is becoming a very popular research subject. In this study, struvite crystals were precipitated and characterized in the presence of the bacterial Leclercia adcarboxglata strain JLS1 that was isolated from a typical dolostone sample. The JLS1 strain was identified as L. adcarboxglata using physiological and biochemical identification methods and by 16S rDNA phylogenetic analysis. The minerals obtained from the culture medium using experimental samples inoculated with L. adcarboxglata JLS1 were not found in the control samples without the bacteria. The experimentally derived minerals were determined to be pure struvites that exhibited primarily a uniform, prismatic-shaped morphology of various sizes. The results of the X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRD) analysis of the minerals revealed that the preferred orientation and lattice distortion were characteristic of struvite crystals. In the experiments conducted using the L. adcarboxglata it was also found that the phosphate, ammonium and magnesium ions in solution were consumed to form the struvites in an alkaline environment. The results of this study can provide important insights into the understanding of the biomineralization process of microbial struvites and wastewater treatment applications, as well as the genesis and therapy of kidney stones.

KEYWORDS:

• Biomineralization
• lattice distortion
• Leclercia adcarboxglata
• preferred orientation
• struvite

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41302079), the National Key Basic Research Development Program (973 Program) (2012 CB723104), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (20133718130001), Shandong University of Science and Technology (SDUST) Research Fund (2015TDJH101), the Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization and Sedimentary Minerals (DMSM201412), the Shandong Province Natural Science Foundation (ZR2013DQ005, ZR2014DM005), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (2013M540560, 2014T70659), and the Qingdao Postdoctoral Applied Research Project (2015199).