A constituent of the bacterial cell wall, peptidoglycan, has been suggested to be a significant fraction of marine dissolved organic matter, but little is known about its turnover. We measured hydrolysis and remineralization rates of peptidoglycan in surface waters by using radiolabeled peptidoglycan that was extracted from a Gram-negative bacterium. Polysaccharide (N-acetyl-glucosamine and N-a...

The effects of modified heavy metal (HM) availability on the microbial community structure and on the microbe-mediated degradation of herbicide isoproturon (IPU) were evaluated in soil with a long-term HM contamination. The fate of C-ring labelled IPU was investigated for over 60 days under controlled microcosm conditions. Phosphate mineral apatite and a water solution of Pb, Zn, and Cd salts w...

Sewage waste represents an ecosystem of complex and interactive microbial consortia which proliferate with different kinetics according to their individual genetic as well as metabolic potential. We performed metagenomic shotgun sequencing on Ion-Torrent platform, to explore the microbial community structure, their biological interactions and associated functional capacity of pre-treated/raw sl...

BACKGROUND Understanding the biological mechanisms used by microorganisms for plant biomass degradation is of considerable biotechnological interest. Despite of the growing number of sequenced (meta)genomes of plant biomass-degrading microbes, there is currently no technique for the systematic determination of the genomic components of this process from these data. RESULTS We describe a compu...

Development of mixed-culture microbial granules under aerobic conditions in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR), capable of completely degrading a recalcitrant metal chelating agent is reported. In laboratory-scale reactor studies, the microbial granules degraded 2mM of free nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) and Fe(III)-NTA completely in 14 and 40 h, respectively. Free NTA was degraded at a specific rat...

Soil microbial assortment is affected by hydrocarbon perturbation, thus selective enrichment of hydrocarbon degraders occurs. Hydrocarbons interact with the terrestrial ecosystem and soil microorganisms shaping the fate of the contaminants relative to their chemical nature and microbial degradative capabilities, respectively. Microbial methods for monitoring bioremediation of hydrocarbons inclu...

During the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the application of 7 million liters of chemical dispersants aimed to stimulate microbial crude oil degradation by increasing the bioavailability of oil compounds. However, the effects of dispersants on oil biodegradation rates are debated. In laboratory experiments, we simulated environmental conditions comparable to the hydro...