Impacts of Surfactant Stress on the Growth of Four Kinds of Bacteria

To study the impacts of surfactant stress on microbial growth,this project took four strains of bacteria as the experimental materials including Bacillus subtilis,Bacillus simplex,Escherichia coli and Proteus vulgaris. The traditional methods of microbial culture; selected two kinds of surfactants such as polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG6000) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were used to culture four strains of bacteria under varying concentrations to explored the impacts of surfactants on the growth of bacteria through measuring the growth curves of four strains of bacteria. The results showed that Proteus vulgaris showed a particular higher tolerance to PEG6000 than others that were apparently inhibited; the Low concentration of SDS (0. 2 g/L) significantly inhibited the growth of the bacteria, and the toxicity of the two surfactants to the four strains of bacteria was sequenced as SDS> PEG6000.