Preparation of a newly microbial polymer using ionizing radiation technique and its conductivity

Extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) is produced by microorganisms for a variety of purpose in response to environmental stresses. The EPS are heterogeneous mixture composed dominantly of polysaccharides and proteins, with nucleic acid and lipid as minor constituents. Application of a bacterial EPS is in mostly bioremediation in environment and it applied to pharmaceutical industries including indwelling medical devices. Furthermore, the EPS studies have mostly been performed in the only level of bacterial culture system. In this study, we have first investigated the structural modification of EPS using ionizing radiation technique. The extracted EPS solution from bacterial culture step was exposed to gamma-irradiation at room temperature. Especially, the EPS was given irradiation at various ranges of 0, 2, 10 and 30 kGy from ⁶⁰Co gamma-ray source. The structural property and surface morphology were characterized by using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Also, the conductivity of EPS was determined by using the Van der PauW method, and the polymeric substances turned out to have semi-conductivity (about 5.38*10^-7)