Study of Bacterial Diversity from Saline Environments (Salt Mines) of Pakistan and their Applications at Regional Level

Pakistan has diverse extreme environments such as salt mines in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Karak/Bahadur khel salt mines) and in the Punjab (Khewra salt mines), which provide diverse habitats for halophilic microorganisms have been studied for microbial communities by using culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques. Most of the isolated bacterial strains by laboratory culture method were belonging to the genus Bacillus. Two novel bacterial species were isolated and characterized by polyphasic taxonomy approach. Some of the isolated bacterial strains were found to possess potential applications in industry, medicine, and agriculture fields.