Two novel strains within the family Caulobacteraceae capable of degradation of linear alkylbenzene sulfonates as pure cultures

Abstract Culture-independent methods found members of the family Caulobacteraceae to be especially enriched in a soil microcosm perfused 21 days with a 50 mg l −1 solution of linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LAS) ( Sanchez-Peinado et al., 2010 ). In this study, bacterial isolates from the same soil microcosm were screened for members of the family Caulobacteraceae . Two strains were identified as Phenylobacterium haematophilum and Caulobacter mirabilis according to their 16S rRNA gene sequences. The two strains were cultured in liquid medium containing LAS (20 and 40 mg l −1 ), and HPLC analyses of the supernatants showed that they were capable of metabolizing LAS as pure cultures. These data confirm that indeed members of the family Caulobacteraceae were actively metabolizing LAS in the soil as previously reported, and provide with two valuable strains to study the metabolism of LAS in vitro .