Isolation and characterization of acidophilic bacterium from Dongxiangshan Mine in Xinjiang Province, China

One bioleaching bacterium, named as strain DXS, was isolated from acid mine drainages (AMDs) of Dongxiangshan Mine of Hami, Xinjiang Province, China. The strain DXS is gram-negative and rod-shaped with a size of (0.40±0.05) μm×(1.3±0.5) μm. The optimal temperature and pH for growth are 30 °C and pH 2.0, respectively. It can grow autotrophically by using ferrous iron, elemental sulfur and NaS2O3 as sole energy sources. In the phylogenetic tree, strain DXS has similarity with Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans type strain ATCC 23270 with 99.57% sequence similarity. The cloning and sequencing of Iro protein gene (iro) and tetrathionate hydrolase gene (tth) reveal that strain DXS is completely identical in iro gene sequence to A. ferrooxidans LY (DQ166841), and almost identical in tth gene sequene to A. ferrooxidans (AB259312) (only two nucleotides change). The bioleaching experiments of marmatite and pyrite reveal that the leached zinc and iron concentrations reach 3.01 g/L and 2.75 g/L, respectively. The strain has a well potential application in industry bioleaching.