Degradation of arsenobetaine to inorganic arsenic by bacteria in seawater

✍ Scribed by Ken'ichi Hanaoka; Osamu Nakamura; Hiroshi Ohno; Shoji Tagawa; Toshikazu Kaise

• Book ID: 104615308
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 400 KB
• Volume: 316
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-5141
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00019377

✦ Synopsis

The substances suspended in seawater were fractionated by membrane filtration into three fractions . Fraction 1 was collected on a membrane filter of 0.22 jm pore-size, fraction 2 on a 5 am pore-size and fraction 3 on 0 .22 µm pore-size from the filtrate passed through the 5 jim membrane filter. Arsenobetaine was incubated with each of these fractions in two media (ZoBell 2216E and a solution of inorganic salts) at 25 °C in the dark under aerobic conditions . The mixture added with fraction 3 was considered to contain only bacteria. In every case, in the inorganic salt medium, inorganic arsenic(V) was derived from arsenobetaine via trimethylarsine oxide . In the ZoBell medium, arsenobetaine was not degraded to inorganic arsenic, although trimethylarsine oxide was derived in every case . We conclude that the degradation of arsenobetaine to trimethylarsine oxide or inorganic arsenic can be accomplished in seawater by bacteria alone .