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REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biosafety and Biosecurity
Volume 12 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1470522
This article is part of the Research Topic Xenobiotic and Emerging Contaminants in Ecosystems: Innovative Geo-microbial Strategies for Prevention, Efficient Clean-up and Biosafety View all 4 articles
Microbial degradation of Contaminants of Emerging Concern: Metabolic, genetic and omics insights for enhanced bioremediation
Provisionally accepted- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
The perpetual release of natural/synthetic pollutants into the environment poses major risks to ecological balance and human health. Amongst these, contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are characterized by their recent introduction/detection in various niches, thereby causing significant hazards and necessitating their removal. Pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, cyanotoxins and emerging pesticides are major groups of CECs that are highly toxic and found to occur in various compartments of the biosphere. The sources of these compounds can be multipartite including industrial discharge, improper disposal, excretion of unmetabolized residues, eutrophication etc., while their fate and persistence are determined by factors such as physico-chemical properties, environmental conditions, biodegradability and hydrological factors. The resultant exposure of these compounds to microbiota has imposed a selection pressure and resulted in evolution of metabolic pathways for their biotransformation and/or utilization as sole source of carbon and energy. Such microbial degradation phenotype can be exploited to clean-up CECs from the environment, offering a cost-effective and ecofriendly alternative to abiotic methods of removal, thereby mitigating their toxicity. However, efficient bioprocess development for bioremediation strategies requires extensive understanding of individual components such as pathway gene clusters, proteins/enzymes, metabolites and associated regulatory mechanisms. 'Omics' and 'Meta-omics' techniques aid in providing crucial insights into the complex interactions and functions of these components as well as microbial community, enabling more effective and targeted bioremediation. Aside from natural isolates, metabolic engineering approaches employ the application of genetic engineering to enhance metabolic diversity and degradation rates. The integration of omics data will further aid in developing systemic-level bioremediation and metabolic engineering strategies, thereby optimising the clean-up process. This review describes bacterial catabolic pathways, genetics, and application of omics and metabolic engineering for bioremediation of four major groups of CECs: pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, cyanotoxins, and emerging pesticides.
Keywords: Biodegradation, pharmaceuticals, Plasticizers, Cyanotoxins, Pesticides, omics, Metabolic pathways, Metabolic Engineering
Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 05 Sep 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Shah, Malhotra, Papade, Dhamale, Ingale, Kasarlawar and Phale. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Prashant S. Phale, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
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