A total of 37 bacterial isolates were obtained from dye-contaminated soil samples at a textile processing factory in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, Thailand, and the potential of the isolates to decolorize and biotransform azo dye Reactive Red 141 (RR141) was investigated. The most potent bacterium was identified as Paenibacillus terrigena KKW2-005, which showed the ability to decolorize 96.45% of RR141 (50 mg/l) within 20 h under static conditions at pH 8.0 and a broad temperature range of 30-40°C. The biotransformation products were analyzed by using UV-Vis spectrophotometry and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy analysis revealed four metabolites generated from the reductive biodegradation, namely sodium 3-diazenylnaphthalene-1,5-disulfonate (I), sodium naphthalene-2-sufonate (II), 4-chloro-1,3,5-triazin-2-amine (III) and N1-(1,3,5-triazin-2-yl) benzene-1,4-diamine (IV). Decolorization intermediates reduced phytotoxicity as compared with the untreated dye. However, they had phytotoxicity when compared with control, probably due to naphthalene and triazine derivatives. Moreover, genotoxicity testing by high annealing temperature-random amplified polymorphic DNA technique exhibited different DNA polymorphism bands in seedlings exposed to the metabolites. They compared to the bands found in seedlings subjected to the untreated dye or distilled water. The data from this study provide evidence that the biodegradation of Reactive Red 141 by P. terrigena KKW2-005 was genotoxic to the DNA seedlings.
Keywords: Biotransformation; HAT-RAPD; Reactive Red 141; decolorization; mung bean; toxicity.