Application to the Degradation of Specific Contaminants

Analysis of the occurrence and frequency of genes encoding the dioxygenases for aromatic hydrocarbons have been used to evaluate the potential of a site for bioremediation  

A stable mixed cnltnre that could degrade benzene was established, and the specihc role of sulfate-redncing bacteria was inferred from the inhibition of degradation in the presence of molybdate. The consortium was characterized from the sequence of small snbnnit rRNA genes, some of which could be assigned to the family Desulfobacteriaceae (Phelps et al. 1998). 

The use of toluene to induce oxygenation of haloalkanes has been discussed in Chapter 7, Part 3, and probes for toluene-2-monooxygenase have been used to evaluate the potential nnmber of TCE-degrading organisms in an aquifer (Fries et al. 1997b). In this study, repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (REP-PCR) (de Bruijn 1992) of isolates was used to classify their metabolic capability. 

Variovorax paradoxus, and it was proposed that this was the principal organism for degradation of phenol in the community (Watanabe et al. 1998b). 

A site at the Agricultural Experimental Station (Ithaca, NY) was treated in microcosms with C-labeled glucose, phenol, caffeine, and naphthalene. Levels of C02 were measured to assess utilization of the substrates, and the populations analyzed by separating the C-labeled DNA by density centrifugation, followed by PCR amplification and sequencing of 16S rRNA (Padmanabhan et al. 2003). Populations contained relatives to a range of bacteria that varied with the substrate. Only relatives of Acinetobacter were found in all samples, and for caffeine only Pantoea. 

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