Understanding microbes to enable their participation in bioremediation.
From billions of year’s microbes are being performing crucial role in balancing biological and geographical cycles as recycling agents. Metabolic potentials of microbes are also utilizing to clean-up environmental contaminations. Clean-up processes are carried out in non-sterile open environments that contain a variety of organisms.
In a phenomenon of bioremediation microbes capable of degrading pollutants, usually have central roles. Microbes are capable of adopting their pre-existing proficiencies to degrade many of xenobiotic compounds and convert them into less toxic forms. Increasing abundance of heavy metals in the microbial habitat; and their interaction with metals have evolved several mechanisms like adsorption, complexation, chemical reduction of metal ions to convert them into less toxic forms or to use them as terminal electron acceptors in anaerobic respiration and this efficiency of microbes make researchers curious to study their tolerance mechanisms in-depth (Kapri et al.,2011). The microbes degrading them are usually in small populations under limited environmental conditions. This has led to possibility of a single microbe or microbial consortia either to clean-up polluted environment or to degrade harmful xenobiotic compounds at their site before they are released into the environment (Evans and Furlong, 2003).
Bioremediation basically relies on understanding physiological parameters of microbes. Recorded importance should be given to know nutritional and other supplementary elements, which enables them to participate at their best in the phenomenon of bioremediation. Study of chemical and physiological nature of sampling site contributes highly in optimizing microbes to ensure their perfect selection. Lack of nutrients, water and appropriate electron acceptors in the contaminated or treatment sites is needed to support the growth of microorganisms capable of remediation. To develop ideal decontamination strategies, the above conditions should be necessarily understood thoroughly. Prominent participation of microbes in bioremediation stands on its growing ability at wide range of physiological conditions like extreme dry, toxic and acidic environments (Schlosser et al., 2011). Bioavailability is that the fraction of chemical accessible to an organism for absorption (Doick et al ., 2004; Fig 2). It is also necessary to understand how microbes destroy contaminants to employ them under in situ and ex situ bioremediation. The introduction of molecular and proteomic approaches in the last few decades to study ecological, biochemical and cellular functions of microbes, has facilitated environmental biotechnologists to gain information for the development of better strategies to improve bioremediation and for further evaluating their consequences. To achieve bioremediation successfully, environmental chemicals are needed to be employed with appropriate microbial catalysts (Evans and Furlong, 2003).