Isolation and selection of bacteria capable of degrading keratin from livestock waste in Tien Giang province

This study is carried out to isolate and select bacterial strains capable of strongly degrading keratin-containing substrates from soil and wastewater samples collected at cattle slaughterhouses in Tien Giang province. In this study, samples were diluted and cultured in the environment of feather flour to isolate and investigate the bacteria's ability to degrade keratin-containing substrates. Most of the isolates had milky white or pale-yellow colonies, whole covers with rod and globular cell lines, and gram-negative and gram-positive strains. The study’s results show that the V5 line has the strongest ability to degrade keratin, with a result of avian feather decomposition of 57.5%. The results of sequencing the 16S ribosomal RNA gene fragment show that the V5 line is 99.79% homomorphic with the Bacillus megaterium line.