The utilization of natural reservoir brine in an enrichment culture medium: An alternative approach for isolation of anaerobic bacteria from an oil reservoir

This study aims to suggest the new approaches of enrichment cultures using natural reservoir brine for enrichment culture medium in order to increase the bacterial population in the enrichment cultures and isolate novel thermophilic anaerobic bacteria from an oil reservoir. The results suggest that the brine-based culture medium should be sterilized by filtration to increase the number of bacterial population and CO2 should be supplied to culture medium to increase the possibility of isolating novel bacteria from oil reservoirs. One of the specific bacteria isolated under the presence of CO2 was a strain AR80 representing a novel bacterium within the genus Petrotoga on the basis of the phylogenetic analysis.