Isolation and Characterization of Cellulose Degrading Bacteria From Hot Springs

Abstract

1.0 INTRODUCTION Cellulose is the most abundant natural organic substance and the predominant component throughout the plant kingdom; because of its large abundance we could manipulate it for the benefit of mankind. Thus travelling back to many years in 1910, the first plant was constructed by Ewen and co-workers for the production of ethanol from sawmill dust, several improvements have been developed for the proper utilization of this natural cellulolytic material (Ramamurthy et al., 1992). For many years, researchers have been engaged in the process of improving technological methods and equipment for hydrolysing wood and other cellulose-containing substances for various industrial purposes (Julian et al., 1990, Saxena et al., 1992; Chen & Wayman, 1992; Teunissen, 1992; Wayman et al., 1992; Doran & Ingram, 1993; Chaudhuri & Sahai, 1993; Sakata et al., 1985; Tewari et al., 1987; Tewari et al., 1988; Malek et al., 1988; Schafener & Toledo, 1991; Shiang et al., 1991). The degradation of the highly crystalline cellulose biomass, in both efficient and cheaply is still a challenge for the researcher for the current cost sensitive markets. Many attempts have been done in using mixed microbial cultures in order to improve the hydrolysis of cellulose. Attempts included co-culturing of microorganisms to complement each other on cellulases enzyme production. The need for these mixed cultures is to improve on the production of biomass, and cellulolytic enzymes for the effective digestion of cellulose (Bailey & Viikari, 1993; Gutierrez-Correa & Tengerdy, 1997 Manonmani & Sreekantiah, 1987; Soundar & Chandra, 1987; Pavlostathis et al., 1990).