A reddish coloured colony was isolated during routine screening of pigment producing microorganism in the Department of Biotechnology, NIT Durgapur. Preliminary evaluation revealed the microbe to be a Gram positive Coccus. The bacterium was maintained on Brain Heart Infusion plates. For analytical purposes, shake flask experiments were conducted by sub culturing the bacterium in Brain Heart Infusion broth and then incubating at 30°C and 120 rpm for 120h. The intracellular content of the bacterium was extracted by cell lysis using methanol. The obtained extract in methanol was scanned in a UV-Vis spectrophotometer and it revealed three distinct peaks at 445nm, 466nm and 492nm. The obtained absorption peaks are a key characteristic feature of carotenoid which led us to establish that the pigment might be a carotenoid. The absorption spectrum was obtained in different solvent system like petroleum benzene, hexane and chloroform. The results suggested that the obtained carotenoid could be Lycopene. As an initial study, Lycopene extract was obtained from tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) and the absorption spectrum of the lycopene extract was compared with the obtained bacterial carotenoid. Extraction of pigment from microbial sources has become a promising field in the research and development. Under this scenario, our findings hold a good prospect in production of microbial carotenoids.

Keywords: Carotenoids, Lycopene, Kocuria sp., 16s rDNA sequencing, Growth profile Absorption spectrum