Five mercury-resistant bacteria were successfully isolated from eighteen soil samples, collected from two of the Nile river bank districts, north and south Cairo where mercury is dumping from the surrounding industrial regions. Isolates were able to grow on basal medium supplemented with 100 ppm HgCl2.The acridine orange treatment revealed that the mercury-resistant gene is not plasmid-borne. The biochemical analysis affiliated the isolates to genus Bacillus. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of their DNA digested with AluI produced a characteristic genomic fingerprinting pattern with common conserved regions among them.
Key words: AluI digestion, Bacillus, Fingerprinting, Mercury, PFGE, RFLP
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