Correlation between cell surface physicochemical properties of bacterial strains and their chromium removal potential

Physicochemical characterization of microbes has gained recently a great interest by scientific community. It is proved of extreme importance in several fields of science and technology applications such as bioremediation. In this work, we investigated the establishment of a possible correlation between chromium removal capacity of seven bacterial strains isolated from contaminated sites with industrial wastes including tanning processing and their cell surface physicochemical properties. Thus, hydrophobicity and donor/acceptor electrons character were obtained using contact angle measurements. Statistical analysis showed a high significant positive correlation between hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) removal by the strains and their acceptor electron character γ+(r = 0.90). While significant negative correlation between the Cr(VI) removal potential and the ΔGiwi value (r = −0.844) and also with their donor electron character γ− (r = −0.746) were observed. These results may contribute to determine a selectrion criteria of bacteria that can be operated in bioremediation applications.