Breaking up Isn't Hard to Do

lent work. Everyone with anything to do with Dictyoste-Wackett and Hershberger have summarized over 90 functional groups in organic molecules, ranging from lium should read this. Scientists who are wondering simple alcohols to tricycloaliphatic rings. Microbes are whether or not to dip their toes will get a better idea of known to have strategies for dealing with 58 of these. whether social amoebas are the answer to their experi-The fact that the remaining functional groups, not yet mental needs. Recent converts will get a better feel for documented to be attacked by microorganisms, are why their research subject behaves the way it does, found in natural products and do not appear to accumu-and old lags will remember experiments they planned, late in the environment suggests that microbes have forgot, and ought to do right now. Finally, for anyone who strategies for dealing with these functional groups as thought of Dictyostelium as a model system growing as well. a homogenous brown suspension in flasks in the lab, This process of microorganisms attacking organic this book introduces the whole organism—closer to real-compounds and converting them to other forms is the ity, and more interesting to boot. primary focus of Biocatalysis and Biodegradation. Bio-degradation and biocatalysis are just two of a host of Robert H. Insall terms that microbiologists use to describe the microbial School of Biosciences metabolism of organic compounds. Biodegradation is Birmingham University commonly used in reference to microbial consumption Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT of environmental contaminants, such as petroleum or United Kingdom pesticides, or wastes, such as sewage or industrial effluents. The term biocatalysis is more generally applied to microbial reactions that convert one organic compound Breaking up Isn't Hard to Do to another that is of commercial value, such as ethanol, solvents, or drugs. Thus, the same enzymes involved in biodegradation can be employed in biocatalysis; which Biocatalysis and Biodegradation term is used just depends upon the process of interest. As Wackett and Hershberger point out in a very nice " We live in the Age of Bacteria (as it was in the beginning, chapter on the history of investigation into biodegrada-is now and ever shall be, until the world ends) " tion and biocatalysis, man has been aware of some of —Stephen Jay Gould, Nature, 1993 these processes, like food spoilage and the production Microbes rule the Earth. The sheer number of prokary-of ethanol, for some time. The …