Polyhydroxybutyrate production by an extremely halotolerant Halomonas elongata strain isolated from the hypersaline meromictic Fără Fund Lake (Transylvanian Basin, Romania).

The tested strain showed the ability for significant production of natural, biodegradable polymers under nutrient limitation and hypersaline conditions suggesting its potentiality for further metabolic and molecular investigations towards enhanced biopolymer production. Additionally, this study reports on the unprecedented use of Raman and XPRD techniques to investigate PHAs of an extremely halotolerant bacterium, thus expanding the repertoire of physical methods to study green plastics derived from extremophilic microorganisms.