ABSTRACT
In the recent years, considerable attention has been paid to microbial biopolymers. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) belong to the family of microbial polyesters that accumulate as storage material in microbial cells under stress conditions. They are aliphatic polyesters of various hydroxyalkanoates synthesized by microorganisms as storage carbon and energy compounds and stored in inclusion bodies within the cytoplasm of the microbial cells. In 1888 Beijerinck first reported the presence of PHA in bacterial cells and Lemoigne its composition in the bacterium Bacillus megaterium as a homopolyester of 3-hydroxybutyric acid, known as polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) and it a prototype of PHA family. The first discovery of PHA was monitored by a French scientist Maurice Lemoigne in Bacillus megaterium in 1926 and it was a short chain length PHA, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate): P(3HB), and it was a well-studied PHA. On the basis of culture condition of PHA production, bacteria are mainly divided into two major groups.
