Development of efficient bioflocculants by exploring the microbial diversity of South African Eastern Cape Province for Novel Bioflocculants

The major objective of this project was to isolate bacteria with the ability to produce high quality flocculants from the marine environments of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Bacteria-secreted flocculants, also known as bioflocculants, are highly desirable for purification of portable water and treatment of wastewater. The desirability of bioflocculants in water and wastewater treatments was highlighted in our publication: <>. Several bioflocculant-producing bacteria have been isolated and characterized in this project, the most characterized been Bacillus spp AEMREGG7 (reported in our publication: <>. Bioflocculants have variable efficiencies, i.e. they differ in their abilities to bind and sediment suspended particles in water. Thus, it was also our aim to characterize the efficiencies of the flocculants secreted by the different bacteria. Flocculant produced by Bacillus spp AEMREGG7 had high flocculating activity. Three articles on this have been published: (1) <>; (2) <>; (3) <>. We also proposed to understand the molecular mechanisms behind bacterial flocculant production because this will provide the basis for manipulation of bacteria physiology to enhance sustainable production of high quality bioflocculants. The idea and principle behind this was presented in <<2nd International Congress on Bacteriology and Infectious Diseases November 17-19, 2014 Chicago, USA>>. In summary, we aimed to identify metabolic pathways of bacteria flocculant production using comparative proteomic analysis. Thus far, this study is inconclusive. Whole genome sequencing of the environmental bacteria isolates will be required for a comprehensive analysis of the metabolic pathways of bacterial flocculant production. An alternative was to use related bacterial species whose sequences are available in the public database, but this approach did not give the best of results. Additionally, it was of interest to determine how the bioflocculant-producing bacteria are affected by the agro-based chemicals -glyphosate and AMPA. Glyphosate and its breakdown product AMPA are introduced into the environment when glyphosate is used as herbicide to eradicate weeds in agricultural fields. Given that bacteria will encounter varying concentrations of glyphosate and AMPA in the environment, we undertook to study how bacteria flocculant producing ability as well as flocculant quality can be impacted by these chemicals. To optimize the process, we first undertook the study of the impacts of glyphosate and AMPA on Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis, which are bacteria generally used in environmental studies. Preliminary results from this investigation have recently been presented at 3 international conferences: (1) <>. 30th BSN Annual International Conference, August 27-30, 2017, Minna, Nigeria; (3) <>. 3rd National Biosafety Conference, August 29, Abuja, Nigeria.

Flocculants may be synthetic or natural in origin, and can result in the fluffy mass formation of suspended particles. Flocculants are extensively applied in the treatment of wastewaters and other industrial effluents. They are also applied in the recover y of suspended solutes from solutions. Nonetheless, inorganic flocculants which includes the salts of poly-aluminium chloride and aluminium sulphate as well as the organic synthetic flocculants (poly-acryl amide and polyethylene amine) have been implicate d in various human health problems such as neurotoxicity, cancer and dementia. The organic synthetic flocculants are also non biodegradable hence, environmentally unfriendly. Bioflocculants are biodegradable, environmentally safe and non-toxic. Thus, they are currently preferred to synthetic flocculants in water and waste water treatments. Till date, the available bioflocculants exhibit low flocculation efficiency and high production cost, hence the continual search for bioflocculants with high efficiency and minimal cost. This project emphasizes the unique and diverse marine environments of Eastern Cape Province (ECP) of South Africa (SA) which has been underexplored as sources of novel bioflocculants. We have previously isolated and characterized bioflo cculant producers including actinobacteria from Algoa Bay, a marine environment of ECP. In this proposed project our thrust is to sample other marine environments of ECP for bioflocculant producers. In addition, we will identify proteins/genes and metabol ic pathways of bacteria bioflocculant Production -an approach which has not been previously applied in this area. The outcome of the project will have potential industrial application in addition to publications in high impact scientific journals. It will also facilitate training of 3 postgraduate female students from previously disadvantaged groups of SA; and promote a basis for a long-term mutually beneficial collaboration between the participating institutions