Narrow Results

Arthrobacter sp. STTX12 was found to utilize a wide range of polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and other hydrocarbons used in the study viz. anthracene, naphthalene, chrysene, benzene, toluene and xylene on MSB as sole carbon and energy source.It also had the plant growth promoting (PGP) attributes like phytohormone (IAA) production, phosphate solubilization, HCN and siderophore production and antagonism against Macrophomina phaseolina and Rhizoctinia solanii with percent inhibition of 46.6% and 52.4% respectively. Also, it was found to have positive chemotactic response for anthracene and naphthalene. Decrease in mean growth rate constant (K) was recorded when PAH was provided as sole source of carbon to Arthrobacter sp. STTX12, with respect to control supplemented with glucose.

The discovery of cross-linked hetero-aromatic polymers in interstellar dust by instruments aboard the Stardust spacecraft would confirm the validity of the biological grain model that was suggested from spectroscopic studies over 20 years ago. Such structures could represent fragments of cell walls that survive 30 km/s impacts onto detector surfaces.

We show that heterocyclic aromatic compounds could explain the interstellar absorption feature at 2200Å, requiring 10% of the available interstellar C and N to be tied up in this form.