Abstract
The microbiology of mining environments has become a research topic of great importance. The present study reports on six bacterial and three fungal isolates which were characterized on a molecular basis. The phylogenetic analysis distributed the bacterial isolates into six groups in which groups A, B and C belonged to
Bacillus beringensis
,
Bacillus
sp. and
Bacillus megaterium
, respectively, while groups D, E and F constituted strains of
Pseudomonas putida
,
Acidothiobacillus
sp. and
Kocuria
sp., respectively. Fungi isolated belonged to the genera
Aspergillus
,
Fusarium
and
Hypocrea
. These isolates showed metal resistances to six heavy metals: Cu, Cr, Pb, Cd, Sb and Ni. For the bacteria, the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of these metals were in the range of 1–11 mM, whereas for fungi, the MIC was in the range of 5–20 mM. The multiple heavy metal-resistant bacterial species may be further screened for application to bioremediation.