Summary
Ten species of bacteria, 13 actinomycetes, 11 yearts and 18 fungi were screened to determine which have the greatest ability to accumulate uranium. the abilities of the microorganisms to accumulate uranium were in the following order: actinomycetes > bacteria, yeasts > fungi. Two species of actinomycetes,Actinomyces levoris andStreptomyces viridochromogenes have extremely high accumulation abilities.
The uptake of uranium by these two species of actinomycetes,Actinomyces levoris andStreptomyces viridochromogenes is very rapid and is affected by environmental factors such as the pH and the concentration of carbonate ion but is not affected by temperature of metabolic inhibitors. Most of the absorbed uranium was released by washing the organisms with an EDTA solution. These results suggest that the accumulation of uranium by actinomycetes depends on physico-chemical adsorption at the cell surface rather than on a biological activity and that uranium is coupled to the cells by ligands which were easily substituted with EDTA. The uptake of uranium followed Freundlich isotherm which confirms this suggestion.
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Horikoshi, T., Nakajima, A. & Sakaguchi, T. Studies on the accumulation of heavy metal elements in biological systems. European J. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 12, 90–96 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01970040
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01970040