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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Determination of Microbial Extracellular Enzyme Activity in Waters, Soils, and Sediments using High Throughput Microplate Assays
Published on: October 1, 2013
[Relationships between phosphine content of samples and their microbial populations and enzyme activities]
Zhi-pei Liu1, Bao-jun Wang, Sheng-fen Jia
1Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China. liuzhp@sun.im.ac.cn
Abstract:
The relationships between phosphine content and various microbial florae, activities of different enzymes were investigated. The results indicated that the phosphine content of samples from various environments was positively related to total anaerobic microorganisms, organic phosphate compounds-dissolving bacteria, denitrifying bacteria, alkaline phosphatase activity and dehydrogenase activity of the samples. The correlation coefficients (R2) for these were 0.93, 0.90, 0.69, 0.79 and 0.82, respectively. The results also showed that the phosphine content was not related to total aerobic microorganisms, inorganic phosphate compounds-dissolving bacteria, sulfate-reducing bacteria, acidic phosphatase activity. In addition to formerly results, the results might infer that the formation of phosphine was due to the reduction of organic phosphate compounds by anaerobic heterotrophic microbes, especially the denitrifying bacteria by using reducing sugar.
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