A rapid and efficient method for directed screening of lipase-producing Burkholderia cepacia complex strains with organic solvent tolerance from rhizosphere.

Lipase from Burkholderia cepacia strain is one of the most versatile biocatalysts and is used widely in many biotechnological application fields including detergent additives, the resolution of racemic compounds, etc. Based on the known whole genomic information of B. cepacia strain, both ampicillin and kanamycin were added to the TB-T medium to screen B. cepacia complex stains from rhizosphere soil samples. The selected colonies from the modified TB-T medium were then qualitatively determined the ability to produce extracellular lipase on the rhodamine B-olive oil agar plates. A total of 35 lipolytic pseudo-B. cepacia complex strains were isolated and the positive rate of lipolytic bacteria was 65%. Among them, 15 pseudo-B. cepacia complex strains showed tolerance to benzene, n-hexane and n-heptane at concentration of 10% (V/V) and were identified by the recA gene sequence. All of the 14 lipolytic bacteria were identified as B. cepacia complex strains except that the recA gene sequence of one lipolytic bacterium, strain ZMB009, was not obtained.