Biodegradation of Crude Oil by an Artificial Microalgal-Bacterial Consortium

The extensive use of petroleum and petroleum products leads to serious oil contamination of the environment, thus considerable interests were taken in microbial degradation and detoxification of these pollutants. Microalgae play an important role in the environmental cleaning of pollutants. Microalgae provide O2 to aerobic bacteria to mineralize pollutants and then take-up the released CO2 [1]. Furthermore, microalgae can help in co-metabolic degradation or produce biosurfactants and extracellular matters to enhance bacterial activity for increasing pollutant bioavailability [2]. Additionally, microalgae can accumulate hydrocarbons, and subsequently make those compounds available to the associated hydrocarbon-utilizing bacteria [3]. The cooperation of phototrophic microalgae and heterotrophic bacteria could potentially improve the degradation of environmental contaminants including oil pollutants [4,5].