Production of Polyhydrobutyrate (phb) from Microorganisms

Plastics are widely used for various applications. Once discarded, it is commonly known that they represent a high environmentalthreat due to their slow degradation; for this reason, there is an imminent need to replace these products with eco-friendlier ones.This study was undertaken to produce polyhydrobuytrate (PHB) from bacterial strains. Biogas slurry was collected from ChukwuemekaOdumegwu University, Uli Campus using sterile Petri dishes.. The samples were analyzed for bacterial growth and screened for the presence of PHB-producing bacterial strain using Sudan Black B and Nile red staining in the presence of LB agar medium (enriched with 1% of sterile glucose). The bacterial strains that produced PHB were characterized based on cultural, microscopy, and biochemical features. The PHB produced was authenticated using Fourier- transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) and Thin layer chromatography (TLC). The result revealed the presence of Bacillus species as the best PHB-producing bacterium and the peaks (1000 -1750 cm-1) shown on FTIR and low RF value (0.76) in TLC confirmed that the compound produced by the bacterium was PHB. This study has shown that Bacillus species, a biogas slurry isolate, efficiently synthesized PHB using synthetic medium shows an alternative and better way to synthesize bio-plastics.