Chlorophenols anaerobic dechlorination

Attention is drawn to the dechlorination by anaerobic bacteria of both chlorinated ethenes and chlorophenolic compounds that serve as electron acceptors with electron donors including formate, pyruvate, and acetate. This is termed dehalorespiration and is important in the degradation of a range of halogenated compounds under anaerobic conditions, and is discussed further in Chapter 3, Part 2 and Chapter 7, Part 3. 

Utkin I, C Woese, J Wiegel (1994) Isolation and characterization of Desulfitobacterium dehalogenans gen. nov, sp. nov., an anaerobic bacterium which reductively dechlorinates chlorophenolic compounds. Int J Syst Bacteriol 44 612-619. 

A facultatively anaerobic organism designated Anaeromyxobacter dehalogenans (Sanford et al. 2002) was capable of dechlorinating ortho-chlorinated phenols using acetate as electron donor—2-chlorophenol was reduced to phenol and 2,6-dichlorophenol to 2-chloro-phenol (Cole et al. 1994). A strain of Desulfovibrio dechloracetivorans was also able to couple the dechlorination of ortho-substituted chlorophenols to the oxidation of acetate, fumarate, lactate, and propionate (Sun et al. 2000). 

Biological. 2,4,5-T degraded in anaerobic sludge by reductive dechlorination to 2,4,5-trichlorophenol, 3,4-dichlorophenol and 4-chlorophenol (Mikesell and Boyd, 1985). An... 

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