Bioremediation is one of the most promising methods to clean up polluted environments using highly efficient potent microbes. Microbes with specific enzymes and biochemical pathways are capable of degrading the tobacco alkaloids including highly toxic heterocyclic compound, nicotine. After the metabolic conversion, these nicotinophilic microbes use nicotine as the sole carbon, nitrogen, and ene...

The distribution of phenylacetaldoxime-degrading and pyridine-3-aldoxime-degrading ability was examined with intact cells of 975 microorganisms, including 45 genera of bacteria, 11 genera of actinomyces, 22 genera of yeasts, and 37 genera of fungi, by monitoring the decrease of the aldoximes by high-pressure liquid chromatography. The abilities were found to be widely distributed in bacteria, a...

Abstract The limited mass transfer in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-contaminated soils during bioremediation treatments often impedes the achievement of regulatory decontamination end-points. Little is known about bioavailability of these hydrophobic pollutants in phytoremediation systems. This work attempts to evaluate, for the first time, chemotaxis as a bioavailability-promoting trai...

A variety of factors, including concentration of oil, antibiotics, dyes, and inoculum washes, were examined to determine their effect on the total counts of microorganisms on oil-containing media. The media found to be best for enumerating petroleum-degrading microorganisms contained 0.5% (vol/vol) oil and 0.003% phenol red, with Fungizone added for isolating bacteria and streptomycin and tetra...

Four Magnetospirillum strains degrading toluene, phenol, benzoate, and other aromatic compounds under anaerobic conditions were isolated from denitrifying enrichment cultures. One of the isolates, toluene-degrading strain TS-6, contained genes that are homologous to those encoding benzylsuccinate synthase (Bss) and benzoyl-CoA reductase (Bcr), two key enzymes of anaerobic toluene and benzoate d...

Pseudomonas strain ADP metabolizes the herbicide atrazine via three enzymatic steps, encoded by the genes atzABC, to yield cyanuric acid, a nitrogen source for many bacteria. Here, we show that five geographically distinct atrazine-degrading bacteria contain genes homologous to atzA, -B, and -C. The sequence identities of the atz genes from different atrazine-degrading bacteria were greater tha...

Two novel 3-chlorobenzoate-degrading bacteria were previously isolated from an aquifer in which no such bacteria could be enriched prior to the introduction of the 3-chlorobenzoate-degrading strain, Pseudomonas sp. B13. To understand the origin of 3-chlorobenzoate-degrading genes in the two novel isolates, the 16S ribosomal RNA, clcD (dienelactone hydrolase) and clcA (chlorocatechol oxygenase) ...

Phytate (inositol hexaphosphate; IHP)-degrading microbes have been suggested to contribute to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)-mediated P transfer from IHP to plants; however, no IHP degrader involved in AMF-mediated P transfer has been isolated to date. We herein report the isolation of IHP-degrading bacteria using a modified baiting method. We applied alginate beads as carriers of IHP powde...

The p-cumate-degrading strain Pseudomonas putida F1 and the m- and p-toluate-degrading strain P. putida mt-2 transform indole-2-carboxylate and indole-3-carboxylate to colored products identified here as indigo, indirubin, and isatin. A mechanism by which these products could be formed spontaneously following dioxygenase-catalyzed dihydroxylation of the indolecarboxylates is proposed. Indolecar...

Marine hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria perform a fundamental role in the biodegradation of crude oil and its petrochemical derivatives in coastal and open ocean environments. However, there is a paucity of knowledge on the diversity and function of these organisms in deep-sea sediment. Here we used stable-isotope probing (SIP), a valuable tool to link the phylogeny and function of targeted micro...