Microbiological applications environment

The Marine Biotechnology Institute (MBI) was founded in 1987 for the study and applications of biodiversity in marine environments. Currently, and within the scope of the present book, the research area of relevance is industrial applications of microbiology . The institute also performs research in C02 fixation. The Applied Microbiology Laboratory is searching cost-effective utilization of microbes for environmental conservation and restoration. In particular, the decontamination of areas polluted with petroleum-related compounds has been addressed. Attention has been paid to removal of polycyclic hydrocarbons. They are also developing processing methods for the conversion of biomass and organic wastes by methane fermentation. 

Investigations in sewers take place in a nonattractive environment that is also often difficult to get into. This fact may have had substantial influence on the rather limited knowledge on the sewer performance, not just the sewer processes. From a microbiological point of view, however, the sewer is a highly interesting environment with high variability and diversity. Hopefully, this fact, highly supported by the evidence of the practical applications, will lead to improved methods for sewer process studies in the future. 

Lajoie, C. A., Chen, S-Y., Oh, K. C. Strom, P. F. (1992). Development and use of field application vectors to express nonadaptive foreign genes in competitive environments. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 58, 655-63. 

Walia, A., Khan, A. Rosenthal, N. (1990). Construction and applications of DNA probes for detection of polychlorinated biphenyl-degrading genotypes in toxic organic-contaminated soil environments. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 56, 254-9-... 

Manz, W., R. Amann, W. Ludwig, M. Vancanney, and K.-H. Schleifer. 1996. Application of a suite of 16S rRNA-specific oligonucleotide probes designed to investigate bacteria of the phylum Cytophaga-Flavobacter-Bacteroides in the natural environment. Microbiology 142 1097-1106. 

Lichtfouse, E. (2000). Compound-specific isotope analysis, application to archael-ogy, biomedical sciences, biosynthesis, environment, extraterrestrial chemistry, food science, forensic science, humic substances, microbiology, organic geochemistry, soil science and sport. Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 14, 1337-1344. 

A method is being developed to transform actinide ions in the near surface environment to less soluble, less reactive, thermodynamically stable phosphate minerals phases through application of organophosphorus complexants. These complexants decompose slowly, releasing phosphate to promote the formation of stable phosphate mineral phases, particularly with the more soluble trivalent, pentavalent, and hexavalent actinide ions. The complexant of choice, myo-inositol(hexakisphosphoric acid) or phytic acid, is a natural product widely used as a nutritional supplement. We have determined that phytic acid decomposes slowly in the absence of microbiological effects, that crystalline phosphate minerals are formed as a consequence of its decomposition, and that the formation of actinide (lanthanide) phosphates reduces the solubility of trivalent and hexavalent metal ions under environmental conditions. 

Life in extreme environments (2) scale-up of bench- to full-scale processes (2) application of microbiological biotransformations to industrial processes (2) conversion from batch to continuous processes (1) bioavailability (4) structure-activity relationships (8) new enzymes bioinformatics (4) proteomics and genomics (4)... 

For pharmaceutical applications the major criterion upon which the background environment is categorised should be the risk of microbiological contamination of the product For... 

Polyolefins are commonly found in many applications in biomedical field. Besides the advancements, there are still some drawbacks which prevent the wider use in many applications. This is mainly due to performance and cost when compared to their conventional counterparts. Studies can be focussed on the development of new in vitro environments for the degradation processes that may occur in the human body either due to body fluids or microbiological environment. Focus is on the commercialisation of currently used composites of polyolefins in medical field. The design of new material for specific applications in a traditional approach will still remain a challenging problem in the medical field. 

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