Recent Updates on the Discovery of Polyhydroxyalkanoates Producers

Therefore, a viable-colony staining method has been developed which involves the direct inclusion of the lipophilic dyes Nile red or Nile blue A in the agar medium. This method requires a very low dye concentration, does not affect cell growth and obviates the need to produce master plates. However, the viable-colony method is more applicable for screening Gram-negative bacteria than Gram-positive bacteria [8]. Moreover, this method has its own drawbacks such as the requirement for appropriate carbon sources for the cultivation 

Gasser and co-workers [12] applied cultivation-dependent (lipophilic staining and PCR) and independent [single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP)] methods to analyse the occurrence and diversity of PHA-producing bacteria from the plant-associated 

Shrivastav and co-workers [26] attempted to isolate PHA-producing bacteria from soil and marine environments using a Jatropha biodiesel by-product generated from the biodiesel production process which uses Jatropha curcas seeds as the carbon source. The Nile red 

The production of PHA from the extremely halophilic Archaea has become the subject of recent research. Halophilic strains from the genera Haloarcula, Natrialba, Haloterrigena, Halococcus, Haloquadratum, Halorubrum, Natronobacterium, Natronococcus and Halobacterium have been reported as PHA accumulators [38]. Several halophilic Archaeal species, in the genera Haloferax and 

Haloarcula, have been reported to have the ability to synthesise PHA from inexpensive carbon sources and PHA from these strains could be extracted easily compared with that of bacteria. Strain IKYSl, which exhibited the highest similarity with Natrinema pallidum JCM 8980 (99%), was isolated from a Tuzkoy salt mine, Tuz lake and its saltern of Kayacik, using cheap substrates such as corn starch, sucrose, whey, apple, melon and tomato wastes [39]. 

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