Studies on tolerance and biotransformation of tellurium by soil bacteria

Abstract

Nanotechnology is the emerging field in science and technology and is poised to bring in revolutionary changes across all spheres of life. It deals with the nano-meter sized objects. Nanotechnology can be applied across a wide variety of fields, right from medicine, textile, and education to defense and manufacturing. Nanomaterials are the leading edge of the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology. A decade ago, nanoparticles were studied because of their size-dependent physical and chemical properties. Now they have entered a commercial exploration period. To avoid the use of toxic chemicals in the synthesis of nanoparticles there is a growing need to develop environmentally sound nanoparticle synthesis process that do not contain toxic chemicals. Biological systems, masters of ambient condition chemistry, synthesize inorganic materials that are hierarchically organized from the nano to macroscale. The use of microorganisms in synthesis of nanoparticles is very exciting area of research with considerable potential for development. The use of bacteria to synthesize metal nanoparticles is not new but the rational biosynthesis strategy providing avenues for further more research as demonstrated by recent literature. The work resulted in (a) determining the tolerance of the test bacterial strains to various concentrations of tellurium which indicated their tolerance up to 700µM of tellurium; (b) generation of nanoparticles in by the bacterial cultures; (c) characterization of resulting nanoparticles using differential light scattering and X-ray diffraction; and (c) evaluation of antimicrobial activity of synthesized nanoparticles.