PCB degradation

Use of analogs of the substrate, for example, biphenyl for PCB-degrading organisms... 

Donnelly PK, RS Hegde, JS Fletcher (1994) Growth of PCB-degrading bacteria on compounds from photosynthetic plants. Chemosphere 28 981-988. 

Flanagan WP, RJ May (1993) Metabolite detection as evidence for naturally occurring aerobic PCB degradation in Hudson River sediments. Environ Sci Technol 27 2207-2212. 

Apart from induction of degradative enzymes by growth with biphenyl, nonrelated naturally occurring substrates have been shown to induce the enzymes for PCB degradation. 

Ahmad D, R Masse, M Sylvestre (1990) Cloning, physical mapping and expression in Pseudomonas putida of 4-chlorobiphenyl transformation genes from Pseudomonas testosteroni strain B-356 and their homology to the genomic DNA from other PCB-degrading bacteria. Gene 86 53-61. 

Taira K, N Hayase, N Arimura, S Yamashita, T Miyazaki, K Furukawa (1988) Cloning and nucleotide sequence of the 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl dioxygenase gene from the PCB-degrading strain of Pseudomonas paucimobilis Ql. Biochemistry 27 3990-3996. 

Barriault D, M Sylvestre (1993) Factors affecting PCB degradation by an implanted bacterial strain in soil microcosms. Can J Microbiol 39 594-602. 

Leigh MB, P Prouzova, M Mackova, T Macek, DP Nagle, JS Fletcher (2006) Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-degrading bacteria associated with trees in a PCB-contaminated site. Appl Environ Microbiol 72 2331-2342. 

In contrast, Williams and May [151] investigated the low-temperature (e.g., 4 °C) microbial aerobic PCB degradation of PCB-contaminated upper Hudson River sediments. They reported the depletion of specific di- and trichloro-biphenyls in the surface layer of PCB-contaminated sediments. The loss of specific PCB congeners from the sediment was indicative of microbial aerobic PCB degradation and demonstrated that this degradation can occur in sediment samples at low temperatures. 

Although carvone has been shown to induce PCB degradation, it cannot act as a sole carbon source. Also, the PCBs partition to the organic fraction of the soil matrix and the bioavailability of PCBs to the degrader organism need to be increased. 

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