Toxicity of Organic Solvents to Microbial Cells with Catalytic Activity
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Abstract:
Using Aspergillus oryzae and Pseudomonas fluorescens as representative types of mold and bacteria microbes respectively, the toxicity of commonly-used organic solvents to the cell growth of microbial cell with catalytic activities was investigated through measurement of microbe growth, hypha ball size and microscopic observation,. It was found that the toxicity of organic solvent to fungi and bacteria has close relationship to its lgP value and also related to the type of solvent. For A. oryzae, n-propanol (lgP value 0.55), t-butanol (lgP value 0.80) and toluene (lgP value 2.5) inhibited the formation of the hypha ball. No mycelium formed when n-butanol (lgP value 0.82) and chloroform (lgP value 2.00) existed in the culture, indicating that they could complestely inhibite the growth of hypha. Though the existence of acetone, short chain alcohols and long chain alkanes hardly changed the total mycelium quality（0.81?0.07）and hypha morphology, they have significant effects on reproductive period and spore morphology. For P. fluorescens, the solvents with lgP values ranged in 0.8~4.6, including n-butanol, chloroform, toluene and octane, completely inhibited the growth of cells（OD560 < 1.17?0.05）. Other solvents made no significant differences from the control（OD560=2.27?0.05）in the bacteria growth. In addition, organic solvent will affect the cell shapes and the arrangement of the cells in the process of culturing.
