Isolation of Two Strains for Microbial Desulfurization of Dibenzothiophene

Two desulfurizing strains S1 and S2 were isolated from sea water from Crude Oil Terminal at Tianjin Port. The ability of the two strains to convert dibenzothiophene (DBT) to 2-dihydroxybiphenyl (HBP) was tested by Gibbs assay, which indicated that 2-HBP existed in the metabolite. The strains S1 and S2 were identified by both 16S rDNA sequence analysis and MALDI BioTyper system as Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Acinetobacter radioresistens respectively, which could degrade 22.3% and 22.4% of DBT in 46 hours respectively.