, 2002; Kang et al., 2007). These products with high biological activity can severely attack cell membranes, proteins and nucleic acids, cause enzyme inactivation, protein denaturation, lipid peroxidation and DNA mutation, and result in ecotoxicity through oxidative damage to cellular components (Imlay et al., 1998; Vandana et al., 2002). Therefore, mechanisms that protect the cell against the toxic effects of ROS such

as H2O2 and are needed. Many cells have developed an antioxidative defense system consisting of ROS-scavenging enzymes, e.g. SOD, CAT, ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and antioxidants such as ascorbate (AsA) and glutathione (GSH) (Mittler et al., 2004). Various antioxidant enzymes, whose function is to eliminate PD0325901 manufacturer oxygen free radicals and protect the organism, indirectly could reflect the changes of oxygen free radical content in living cells. SOD can catalyze to O2 and H2O2 rapidly (Gerlach et al., 1998) and then H2O2 is eliminated by the H2O2-scavenging enzyme CAT (Hidalgo et al., 2004). Among cellular functions, GST plays an important role in the detoxification of ROS and the regulation of redox balance (Siritantikorn et al., 2007). Total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), which

is defined as a measure of the amount of free radical scavenging (MacDonald-Wicks et al., 2006), is a useful parameter to assess the antioxidant status of an organism. Microorganisms

frequently undergo stress conditions caused by herbicide BTK inhibitor application (Lü et al., 2009). Bacteria possess a wide variety of stress responses, including oxidative stress response, and they have the ability to sense the stress signal through a process in which many enzymes are involved (Niazi et al., 2008). There is considerable interest in free radical-mediated damage in biological systems following atrazine exposure. However, these studies focused mainly on damage to animals and plants cells. Few studies have shown the response of antioxidant enzymes in bacteria to the oxidative stress induced by atrazine. Moreover, information on general stress responses Florfenicol and their regulation in bacteria is limited. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the response of antioxidant enzymes in two representative bacteria to atrazine stress. SOD, CAT, GST activities and T-AOC in one Gram-negative representative strain Escherichia coli K12 and one Gram-positive representative strain Bacillus subtilis B19 treated with atrazine were examined in this study. We believe that this work will be valuable for further study on atrazine stress tolerance of bacteria and defense mechanism of antioxidant enzymes against atrazine or other triazine herbicides.