ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF RED PIGMENTED BACTERIUM FROM SOIL AND STUDY ON ITS PIGMENT PRODUCTION UNDER PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL STRESS

Soil is a major source of variety of microorganisms which produce variety of products useful to human beings. One such microbial product is Pigment with variety of bioactive properties such as antimicrobial, anticancer, anti-oxidant etc. Isolation was carried out from soil samples using concentration method on Nutrient agar medium containing 2% glycerol. Red pigmented bacterial colony was selected and purified. All characteristics such as morphological, colonial and biochemical were determined. For confirmation isolate was subjected to molecular identification.The isolate was found to be Vibrio rhizosphaerae. Then cultivation was carried out and pigment was extracted using organic solvents methanol and chloroform. After extraction of pigment absorption maxima (300-800 nm) was measured using UV-Vis spectrophotometer with methanol as blank. The highest absorption was observed to be at 535 nm like Prodigiosin. The degree of pigmentation was measured for the isolate was found to be 1.38. The effect of UV irradiation as well as Ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS) was also determined. In case of UV irradiation, no growth was observed after UV treatment that indicated that bacterium is UV susceptible and in case of EMS treatment bacteria could grow and produce pigment. The degree of pigmentation was again measured for EMS treated cultures and it was found that high EMS (i.e. above 1.5 %) concentration can be useful for hyper pigmentation. The newly formulated medium was checked for pigment production and it was found to be more suitable giving 1.41 degree of pigmentation.