Archives of Microbiology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02380-w

ORIGINAL PAPER

Isolation and characterization of halophilic bacteria with the ability

of heavy metal bioremediation and nanoparticle synthesis from Khara
salt lake in Iran
Hasan Diba1 · Reza Ahangari Cohan2 · Morteza Salimian3 · Rohallah Mirjani1 · Mohammad Soleimani1 ·
Farnaz Khodabakhsh1

Received: 20 January 2021 / Revised: 9 May 2021 / Accepted: 11 May 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
Increasing environmental pollutants such as heavy metals have become one of the most severe health dangers because of
rapid industrialization. Exposure to lead and nickel heavy toxic metals can lead to hazardous diseases affecting most of the
organs in humans. Bioremediation is a process that uses the ability of microorganisms or plants to detoxify environmental
contaminants at lower costs than physicochemical techniques. This study isolated halophilic bacteria from Khara salt lake in
Iran and screened their ability to resist lead and nickel. After screening stages, three selected strains including Bacillus sp.
A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22 and Salinicoccus A43 were identified by16S rDNA sequencing and the related sequences were
submitted to GeneBank with accession IDs MN588312, MN588313, and MN 588,314, respectively. These strains resist 7.2
mM, 4.1 mM, and 6.7 mM lead and 3.6 mM, 3.7 mM, and 4.1 mM nickel, respectively. Investigation of growth pattern and
evaluation of bioremediation ability by atomic absorption spectroscopy revealed that Bacillus sp. A21 could decrease lead
and nickel in culture medium up to 97.5% and 76%, respectively. Oceanobacillus sp. A22 showed higher lead bioremediation
rate (98.8%) and lower nickel-bioremediation rate (73.5%). Salinicoccus sp. A43 showed the least bioremediation ability
(92% lead and 71.7% nickel). The ability of selected strains to synthesize lead and nickel nanoparticles was evaluated using
UV/Vis spectrophotometry and Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX). Particle dimensions were measured using
Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Bacillus sp. A21 and Oceanobacillus sp. A22 strains were able to synthesize lead
nanoparticles; however, Salinicoccus sp. A43 could synthesize both lead and nickel nanoparticles.

Keywords Extremophile · Lead · Nickel · Bioremediation · Halophile · Nanoparticle synthesis

Introduction

Increasing environmental pollutants such as heavy metals

Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt. due to the rapid industrialization of societies have become
one of the most serious health threats. Long-term exposure
* Reza Ahangari Cohan
cohan_r@yahoo.com to heavy metals like lead and nickel cause severe disor-
ders in humans, such as immune weakness, susceptibility
* Farnaz Khodabakhsh
farnaz.khodabakhsh@ajaums.ac.ir to infections, osteoporosis, allergies, cancer, and respira-
tory failure (Yadav et al. 2017). Because heavy metals
1
Department of Genetics and Advanced Medical Technology, are not degradable, their accumulation in nature is one of
Medical Biotechnology Research Center, Faculty the environmental alarms. Therefore, transforming such
of Medicine, AJA University of Medical Sciences, Tehran,
Iran toxic heavy metals into a less dangerous state is quite nec-
2 essary. The use of microorganisms for bioremediation is
Department of Nanobiotechnology, New Technologies
Research Group, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran known as the main low-cost environmental management
3 (Alvarez et al. 2017). The adsorption and removal proper-
Department of Medical Laboratory, Faculty of Paramedical
Sciences, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, ties of heavy metals in some microorganisms depend on
Iran their ecological niches (Liu 1993). Some microorganisms

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exhibit a certain tolerance to heavy metals (Gavrilescu
2004) and numerous experiments on different biomasses
of microorganisms have been shown that some of them
can remove heavy metals by absorbing these metals into
their bodies (Samanta et al. 2012; Mustapha and Hlimoon
2015).
Extremophiles are a significant population of microor-
ganisms that can survive and produce metabolites in hos-
tile habitats (Asoodeh et al. 2010). Halophiles and halo-
tolerants can produce saline-resistant enzymes that act in
the low-moisture areas (Bano et al. 2018). Because of their
specific physiology, they exhibit resistance to the high con-
centration of solutes, so they appear to be able to grow at
the high concentration of heavy metals for bioremediation
purposes (Al-Mailem et al. 2018). Nowadays, there is an
increasing interest in the screening of extremophiles such
as halophiles with natural resistance to in situ stresses and
producing different nanoparticles (Diego 2018; Noram-
buena 2020). Halophilic prokaryotes can tolerate and
detoxify heavy metals which during the processes, metal-
lic ions could convert to nanoparticles (Abdollahnia et al.
2020). Lead nanoparticles are reported as rigid, stable,
and thermoelectric fusible material. Nickel nanoparticles
have important applications in catalysts, conducting and
magnetic materials. Because nickel is oxidized easily, the
synthesis of nickel nanoparticles is difficult (Wu and Chen
2003).
In this study, isolation and characterization of halotol-
erant bacteria were carried out from Khara salt lake in
Iran as a novel sampling point. After screening and phy-
logenetic analysis, the bacteria were evaluated for lead
and nickel resistance and their ability to bioremediation
of these heavy metals. Finally, the isolated bacteria were
investigated for synthesis of lead and nickel nanoparticles.
Fig. 1  The satellite image of
sampling points
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Archives of Microbiology
Materials and methods
Sampling
Samplings were performed at 52°41′22.53″ E and
32°18′11.87″ N in Khara salt lake in Iran at four levels
including salt mound, soil surface, 5 cm depth, and 10 cm
depth. The satellite image of sampling points is shown in
Fig. 1.
Isolation of halophilic bacteria
Two types of a defined medium (5 g ­L−1 Peptone, 3 g ­L−1
Meat Extract, 50 g L­ −1 Yeast Extract, 15 g L
­ −1 Agar, and
100 g L −1
­ salt) were used to isolate the halotolerant bac-
teria. The difference in the culture media was in their salt
composition. Medium D contained 81 g ­L−1 NaCl, 9.7 g
­L−1 ­MgSO4.7H2O, 7 g ­L−1 ­MgCl2.6H2O, 2 g L ­ −1 ­CaCl2, 60
−1 −1
mg ­L ­NaHCO3, and 26 mg ­L NaBr (Amoozegar et al.
2012), while Medium A contained only 100 g ­L−1 NaCl as
salt presents in the culture medium. After dilution of the
samples to ­10–1 using 0.1 M phosphate buffer (0.0754 M
­Na2HPO4.7H2O, 0.0246 ­NaH2PO4.H2O, pH 7.4), 100 µL of
the samples was used to inoculate onto the culture media
by speared plate technique. The culture media were incu-
bated up to two weeks at 35 ± 1 °C (Amoozegar et al. 2012).
The appearance of colonies during the incubation time was
evaluated and colonies that showed different features were
re-cultured and incubated to ensure purity by Gram stain-
ing and microscopic examination. Each purified colony was
cultured in its respective liquid culture medium and kept
in a 15%v/v glycerol solution at −80 °C. The isolates were
then screened for salt tolerance up to 20%w/v as previously
described.
Archives of Microbiology
Resistance to heavy metals
Bacterial resistance to heavy metals was investigated using
Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) method in a
defined saline medium [13] with 10% w/v salt that the bacte-
rium showed the resistance. Briefly, different concentrations
of lead (Sigma Aldrich, Cat. No.: 209708) and nickel (Sigma
Aldrich, Cat. No.: 266981) with the interval of 0.5 mM were
added to the medium. If the bacterium was not able to grow
at the mentioned concentration, the interval concentration
was decreased to 0.1 mM. For the test, 0.5 McFarland con-
centration (1 × ­106–5 × ­106 CFU/ml) of bacterial cultures
was prepared and then inoculated into the media. The plates
were then surveyed every 24 h up to two weeks.
Molecular identification
The genomes of screened isolates were extracted by a bac-
terial genome extraction kit (MBST, Tehran, Iran). For
molecular identification using 16S rDNA sequencing, 27F
(5`-AGA​GTT​TGATCMTGG​CTC​AG-3`) and 1492R (5`-
ACG​GYT​ACC​TTG​TTA​CGA​CTT-3`) primers were used
in Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) (5 min. 95 °C; 40 s.
95 °C, 40 s. 65 °C, 1.5 min 72 °C for 30 cycles; 10 min.
72 °C) (Diba et al. 2018). The reaction was performed in
50 µL volume with 2 Master Mix RED (Ampliqon, Odense
M, Denmark). After electrophoresis on 1.7% w/v agarose
gel, the DNA bands were purified using DNA extraction kit
(Vivantis, Selangor, Malaysia) and sequenced by Macrogen
company (Seoul, South Korea). The chromatograms were
evaluated by MEGA X software and the phylogenetic trees
were generated using the comparison of the sequences via
Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) in the EzBio-
Cloud database (Yoon et al. 2017) and maximum-likelihood
(MLH) trees were made with 1000 bootstraps (Kumar et al.
2018). Finally, the sequences were submitted to the Gen-
Bank database.
The growth kinetics of isolated strains
To achieve the appropriate sampling time for evaluating
heavy metals reduction by strains, the broth defined medium
was prepared in the presence of heavy metals (with a con-
centration of 1 mM) and 10%w/v salt, then the isolates (at
0.5 McFarland concentration) were inoculated. The growth
kinetics of the cultured bacteria were monitored at 2 h inter-
vals for a total period of 106 h using a spectrophotometer
(PG Instrument, UK) at 600 nm.
Evaluation of heavy metal removal
The broth defined medium was supplemented with 1 mM
concentration of heavy metals and 10%w/v salt. The strains
were inoculated into the culture media at the logarithmic
phase with a concentration of 0.5 McFarland. According
to the growth kinetic patterns, the cells were centrifuged
at 3000 × g for 15 min and the supernatants were used for
residual lead and nickel determination (Amoozegar et al.
2012). Heavy metal concentrations were measured using
atomic absorption spectroscopy (Thermo Elemental Solaar
M5, UK) in the ISO 17,028 Reference Laboratory of the
Iranian Research Organization for Scientific and Technology
(IROST), Tehran, Iran.
Nanoparticle synthesis evaluation
The cell pellets were achieved by centrifugation of over-
night cultured media (30 mL) at 5000 × g. The pellets were
then mixed with 30 mL solution containing 1 mM lead and
nickel ions and incubated at 37 °C for 72 h. After incubation,
the suspensions were centrifuged at 5000 × g and the super-
natants were analyzed by T80 + UV/Vis (PG Instrument,
UK) at 190–500 nm and Energy-Dispersive X-ray spec-
trometer (EDX) (SAMx, France). Field Emission Scanning
Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) (Mira II LMU TESCAN
FE-SEM, Czech Republic) was used to measure the size of
nanoparticles.
Results
Isolation of halophilic bacteria
Two media with differences in salt composition were used
for isolation of bacteria. Four isolates were obtained from
soil surface sample which two out of four were from the
medium A that were coded as A21 and A22, and two out of
four were from the medium D that were coded as D25 and
D26. One isolate was obtained from 5 cm depth sample from
the medium D which was coded as D34 and one isolate was
obtained from 10 cm depth sample in the medium A which
was coded as A43. All isolates resisted to salt concentration
up to 20% w/v (Fig. 2).
Lead‑ and nickel‑resistance measurements
The lead- and nickel-resistance data for the isolates are sum-
marized in Table 1. According to the results, isolates A21,
A22, and A43 were selected because they showed higher
resistance to both heavy metals. The bacterium was consid-
ered resistant to the heavy metals when it can grow at con-
centrations above 1 mM (Rathgeber et al. 2002; Amoozegar
et al. 2005).
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 Archives of Microbiology

Fig. 2  The macroscopic phenotypic characteristics of isolated colonies (a) and the gram-stained images (b). 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are A21, A22,
A43, D25, D26 and D34 isolates, respectively

Table 1  The metals resistant analysis of the isolates algorithms to a matrix of pairwise distance estimated
Isolate code Lead resistance (mM) Nickel
by the Maximum Composite Likelihood (MCL) method,
resistance and then selecting the topology with a superior log-
(mM) likelihood value. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch
lengths measured in the number of substitutions per site
A21 7.2 3.6
(Kumar et al. 2018). According to phylogenetic trees,
A22 4.1 3.7
A21, A22, and A43 isolates were identified as Bacillus
A43 6.7 4.1
sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22 and Salinicoccus sp.
D25 0.4 1.6
A43, respectively. The partial 16S rDNA sequences were
D26 0.4 1.6
submitted to GeneBank with accession IDs MN588312,
D34 1.6 0.8
MN588313, and MN 588,314, respectively.

The growth kinetics

Molecular identification
Agarose gel electrophoresis of the PCR products showed
sharp bands at 1500 bp (data not shown). Partial 16S
rDNA sequencing was performed and phylogenetic trees
were generated using EzBiocloud database (https://​www.​
ezbio​c loud.​n et/) where only type strains are presented.
The evolutionary history was concluded by the Maximum
Likelihood method and Tamura-Nei model (Tamura and
Nei 1993). In Fig. 3, the percentage of trees in which
associated taxa clustered together is shown next to the
branches. Initial trees for the heuristic search were done
automatically by applying Neighbor-Join and BioNJ
The growth kinetic analysis of microorganisms is carried out
to obtain accurate information about the growth behavior
for optimal cultivation efficiency in relevant applications.
The growth kinetics of selected strains were estimated in
broth medium A containing 1 mM lead and 1 mM nickel to
achieve the appropriate sampling time for evaluating heavy
metals reduction. The same medium without heavy metals
was used as control. Figure 4A–C correspond to the growth
kinetic curves of Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22,
and Salinicoccus sp. A43, respectively. The growth kinetics
showed polynomial models. Initially, all strains showed a
logarithmic phase for 30–40 h and then entered a stationary

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Archives of Microbiology

Fig. 3  Phylogenetic trees of A21, A22, and A43 isolates based on 16S rDNA sequence. Relationships are shown to type strains only

phase. After the first stationary phase, all strains cultured in
a medium containing heavy metals showed an increase in the
­OD600nm and then re-entered to a second stationary phase.
Whereas, in the control medium, all isolated bacteria entered
the death phase immediately after the first stationary phase.
Heavy metal removal evaluation
According to the growth kinetic curves, sampling of Bacil-
lus sp. A21 and Oceanobacillus sp. A22 was done at 30th
h of fermentation, while sampling of Salinicoccus sp. A43

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Fig. 4  The growth kinetic curves of (a) Bacillus sp. A21, (b) Oceanobacillus sp. A22, and (c) Salinicoccus sp. A43 in medium A containing 1
mM heavy metals and 10% salt concentration. The same medium without heavy metals was used as control
was performed at the 40th h of fermentation. By analyz-
ing the concentration of heavy metals using atomic absorp-
tion spectroscopy, it was found that lead concentration was
decreased as 97.5 ± 0.1%, 98.8 ± 0.2% and 92 ± 0.4% in the
culture media containing Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacil-
lus sp. A22, and Salinicoccus sp. A43, respectively. On the
other hand, nickel concertation was decreased 76 ± 1.5%,
73.5 ± 1.6, and 71.7 ± 1.8 by Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacil-
lus sp. A22, and Salinicoccus sp. A43, respectively.
Evaluation of nanoparticles synthesis by isolated
bacteria
Nanoparticle synthesis of cell pellets was initially studied using
UV–Vis spectrophotometry (Joglekar et al. 2011). The UV–Vis
spectrum showed that the suspensions had an adsorption peak
at 290 nm. The lead suspension absorbances were 0.1, 0.62,
and 0.37 for Salinicoccus sp. A43, Oceanobacillus sp. A22, and
Bacillus sp. A21, respectively. These results indicated that all
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Archives of Microbiology
supernatants had the potential to synthesize lead nanoparticles.
However, the absorbance values of nickel suspensions were
negligible for Bacillus sp. A21 and Oceanobacillus sp. A22.
Surprisingly, a slight absorption was observed in the suspension
related to Salinicoccus sp. A43 (Fig. 5). Moreover, EDX analy-
sis confirmed the identity of synthesized nanoparticles (Fig. 6).
The size of synthesized nanoparticles was further studied by
SEM. The results showed that Bacillus sp. A21 and Oceanoba-
cillus sp. A22 produced lead nanoparticles in the size range of
75–100 nm and 10–15 nm, respectively. Salinicoccus sp. A43
produced both lead and nickel nanoparticles in the size range
of 80–100 and 10–20 nm, respectively (Fig. 7).
Discussion
Industrialization of societies causes human exposure to
heavy metals, such as lead and nickel (Yadav et al. 2017).
Bioremediation using microorganisms, especially bacteria,
Archives of Microbiology
Fig. 5  The absorption spectra of suspensions containing cell pellets with metals. (a) Bacillus sp. A21, (b) Oceanobacillus sp. A22, and (c) Salin-
icoccus sp. A43 related to lead nanoparticles synthesis and (d) Salinicoccus sp. A43 related to nickel nanoparticle synthesis
is one of the most useful methods for removing these kinds
of contaminants because of their ability to grow under con-
trolled conditions (Khodabakhsh et al. 2011; Alvarez et al.
2017). Halophiles or halotolerant bacteria due to their spe-
cific physiology can grow in high concentrations of heavy
metals for bioremediation purposes (Al-Mailem et al. 2018).
The physicochemical and structural characteristics of dif-
ferent soil horizons provide various niches with the diver-
sity of microorganism populations. Therefore, the diversity,
abundance, and activity of bacterial communities are struc-
tured with soil depth (Griffiths et al. 2003). Amoozegar et al.
(2012) isolated 24 bacterial strains from saline areas of Iran
and surveyed their heavy metals absorption ability. Among
the strains, Halomonas sp. showed the ability to grow in the
presence of 5 mM lead that could decrease 90% of metal
in 5% w/v salt concentration at 35 °C (Amoozegar et al.
2012). Banmark and Fardeau (2016) isolated Micrococcus
sp. from industrial wastewater, which showed the strain
could decrease 80.9% of nickel and 91.06% of lead (Ben-
malek and Fardeau 2016). Asksonthong et al. (2016) cul-
tured Halomonas elongate and Tetragenococcus halophilus
at high salt concentrations and evaluated the ability of lead
bioremediation. These bacteria in a culture medium with
10–20% w/v salt reduced 84.79% and 91.27% of the lead
after 48 h and 96 h, respectively (Asksonthong et al. 2016).
Dabir et al. (2019) isolated 64 different bacterial strains
from the soil samples of coal, salt, and aluminum mining
industries. After molecular identification, Microbacterium
oxydans CM3, and Rhodococcus sp. AM1 could absorb 58%
and 39% of the lead after 72 h of incubation, respectively
(Dabir et al. 2019). In the current research, we isolated 6
bacterial strains from Khara salt lake as a novel sampling
site from the salt mound, soil surface, 5 cm depth, and 10
cm depth that could grow up to 20% w/v salt-containing
media. Among the isolates, three strains showed good resist-
ance to lead and nickel heavy metals. The isolated bacteria
molecularly identified via 16S rDNA sequencing as Bacillus
sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22, and Salinicoccus sp. A43.
Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22 and Salinicoccus
sp. A43 were resistant to 7.2, 4.1, and 6.7 mM of lead and
3.6, 3.7, and 4.1 mM of nickel at 10% w/v salt concentra-
tion, respectively. Bacillus and Oceanobacillus are genera
that are related to the Bacillaceae family, Bacillales order,
Bacilli class, and Firmicutes phylum of bacteria (Logan and
Vos 2018). Salinicoccus is related to a different family called
Staphylococcaceae in the Bacillaceae family (Ventosa 2015).
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Fig. 6  EDX spectra of synthesized nanoparticles. a Lead nanoparti-
cles produced by Bacillus sp. A21, (b) Lead nanoparticles produced
by Oceanobacillus sp. A22, (c) Lead nanoparticles produced by
The Halomonas spp. that Amoozegar et al. (Amoozegar
et al. 2012) and Asksonthong et al. (2016) (Asksonthong
et al. 2016) had isolated are related to proteobacteria phylum
(Vreeland 2015). Micrococcus sp. that was isolated by Ban-
mark and Fardeau (2016) (Benmalek and Fardeau 2016), as
well, Microbacterium oxydans CM3 and Rhodococcus sp.
AM1 that were isolated by Dabir et al. (2019) (Dabir et al.
2019) are related to Actinobacteria phylum (Jones 2015).
Tetragenococcus halophilus that was isolated by Askson-
thong et al. (2016) (Asksonthong, Siripongvutikorn et al.
2016) is related to the Lactobacillales family (Dicks et al.
2015). Our isolates with different taxonomical classification
are just common in phylum with Tetragenococcus halophilus
that was isolated by Asksonthong et al. (2016) (Askson-
thong et al. 2016). Evaluation of growth kinetics of isolates
in broth media showed a bi-phasic pattern for all samples.
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Archives of Microbiology
Salinicoccus sp. A43 and (d) Nickel nanoparticles produced by Salin-
icoccus sp. A43
This may be due to the reduction or depletion of some easily
accessible nutrients in the culture media, which forces the
bacteria to use other nutrients by changing the metabolic
pathways. Results indicated that Bacillus sp. A21 reduced
97.5 ± 0.1% and 76 ± 1.5% of lead and nickel after 30 h of
fermentation. Oceanobacillus sp. A22 reduced 98.8% and
73.5% ± 1.6% of lead and nickel after 30 h of fermentation.
Salinicoccus sp. A43 reduced 92% ± 0.4% and 71.7 ± 1.8%
of lead and nickel after 40 h of fermentation, respectively.
The bioremediation capacity of species Halomonas elongate
and Tetragenococcus halophilus that were evaluated by Ask-
sonthong et al. (2016) at 10 w/v% salts, showed maximum
reduction at 48 h (Asksonthong et al. 2016) and Microbac-
terium oxydans CM3 and Rhodococcus sp. AM1 showed
maximum reduction at 72 h of fermentation (Dabir et al.
2019). The relatively short removal time indicates the high
Archives of Microbiology
Fig. 7  SEM images of synthesized nanoparticles. a Lead nanopar-
ticles produced by Bacillus sp. A21, (b) Lead nanoparticles pro-
duced by Oceanobacillus sp. A22, (c) Lead nanoparticles produced
efficiency of our isolates in the removal of lead and nickel.
Because, one of the major problems in the removal of heavy
metals from the environment is the duration of the process,
which may take a long time (Masindi and Muedi 2017).
Our results indicated that the introduced strains have the
potential ability to rapidly decreasing lead and nickel heavy
metals from polluted environments. Ramadan et al. (2017)
isolated Serratia plymuthica from a wastewater plant and
evaluated the nanoparticle synthesis potency from it. This
bacterium resisted 8 mM lead and could biosynthesize lead
nanoparticles. UV–Vis spectroscopy showed a peak at 330
nm. EDS results showed the ability of Serratia plymuthica
to biosynthesis lead nanoparticles. The size of nanoparticles
was 93 nm determined by Dynamic Light Scanning (DLS)
(Ramadan et al. 2017). In our research, the nanoparticle
by Salinicoccus sp. A43, and (d) Nickel nanoparticles produced by
Salinicoccus sp. A43
synthesis by the bacterial pellets was initially studied using
UV–Vis spectrophotometry that had a peak at 290 nm.
Results indicated that Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp.
A22 and Salinicoccus sp. A43 had the potential to synthesize
lead nanoparticles. EDX analysis confirmed the identity of
synthesized lead nanoparticles. SEM analysis showed that
Bacillus sp. A21, Oceanobacillus sp. A22, and Salinico-
ccus sp. A43 produced lead nanoparticles in a size range
of 75–100 nm, 10–15 nm, and 80–100 nm, respectively.
None of our isolates were common in taxonomic properties
with Serratia plymuthica which is a species related to the
Enterobacteriaceae family, Enterobacteriales order, Gamma-
proteobacteria class, and Proteobacteria phylum (Grimont
and D. 2015). Surprisingly, one of our isolates, Salinicoccus
sp. A43 could produce nickel nanoparticles in the size range
13

of 10–20 nm. Although some researches have been done on
the possibility of producing nickel nanoparticles from plant
species (Bibi et al. 2017; Kichekar et al. 2018; Lingaraju
et al. 2020), no report was found so far on the production of
nickel nanoparticles from halophilic bacteria.
Conclusion
In the current study, three novel bacteria were isolated from
Khara salt lake that showed resistance to lead and nickel
heavy meals. Among these species, Bacillus sp. A21 and
Oceanobacillus sp. A22 can synthesize lead nanopar-
ticles and Salinicoccus sp. A43 can synthesize both lead
and nickel nanoparticles. By further studies on the biore-
mediation mechanisms, these bacteria can use for lead and
nickel bioremediations in polluted locations to decrease the
exposure of human populations to these toxic heavy met-
als. Moreover, the isolated bacteria could be employed in
the production of lead and nickel nanoparticles that have a
variety of applications in the industry.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their deep gratitude
to all who provided support during this research.
Authors’ contributions FK and RAC designed the study, HD performed
the experiments. HD, FK, and RAC drafted the manuscript. FK, RAC,
MS, RM, and MS analyzed the data. All authors read and approved
the final manuscript.
Funding Not applicable.
Data availability All isolated bacteria were deposited in Iranian Bio-
logical Resource Center.
Code availability Not applicable.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors announce there is no conflict of inter-
est.
Ethics approval Not applicable.
Consent to participate Not applicable.
Consent for publication All authors reviewed and approved the final
version of manuscript.
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