Studies on the effect of ZnCl2 on phosphatase enzyme activity and biomass of Pseudomonas fluorescens (ATCC® 13525TM

Abstract

Living organism requires certain metals for their growth and metabolism and evolved an appropri-ate uptake mechanism for metals. However, it is particularly difficult to establish mutual relation-ship when soil is continuously contaminated with various heavy metals. Phosphatase enzyme sig-nificantly accelerates the release of inorganic P from organic compounds and returns it to the soil. Therefore, the study of Phosphatase enzyme that releases P from organic compounds by dephos-phorylation of phosphor-ester or phosphoanhydride bond in an organic matter is an important tool in initiating biofertilizer for specific crops. The present study indicated that the availability of metal such as Zinc in its inorganic form can act as an inhibitory factor for the growth and activity of bacteria such as Pseudomonas flourescens and the biomass of P. flourescens decrease with in-crease ZnCl2 concentration. It can be concluded that ZnCl2 acts as an inhibitor to the growth of P. flourescens and also the presence of ZnCl2 in the growth medium decreases the phosphatase en-zyme activity of the bacteria, which reveal that metals can also affect the activity of the microbes