Application of Genomics and Proteomics in Bioremediation

Microbes and Bioremediation

Dynamic behavior, flexibility in nutritional requirements and ability to adopt under extreme stress conditions makes the microbe the most eligible life forms for survival. This virtue of the microbe is proving to be beneficial to human kind especially when it comes to removal of contaminants / toxic entities from environment. A large number of microorganisms have been reported for degradation of different industrial wastes such as dyes (Sartale et al., 2011, Keharia & Madamwar, 2003); hydrocarbons, specially related to petrochemiscal waste (Chhatre et al., 1996; Kapley et al., 2009; Mishra et al., 2001); tannery effluent (Shrivastava et al., 2003); chlorinated aromatics (Banta and Kahlon, 2007); distillery spentwash (Kumar et al., 2007); pesticides (Malhotra et al., 2007) heavy metals (Tripati & Shrivastava, 2007) and so on. Similarly, a phenomenon such as chemotaxis and its relevance in bioremediation using the pure culture system in model study has also been reported (Paul et al., 2006). The Energy Research Institute, New Delhi, demonstrated an application of carrier based hydrocarbon- degrading bacterial consortium for bioremediation of crude oil contaminated agricultural land in northeastern and western part of India (Mishra et al., 2001). Utilization of genomic tools in the identification of microbial community has led to the discovery of unique bacteria that were not accessible by traditional techniques. DNA extraction from target niches and amplification of the DNA bar-coding region by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has proved extremely useful in meaningful characterization of microbial community (Malik et al., 2008). Real time microbial community analysis is also possible with the help of sequencing based approach where microbial population dynamics can be studied at different time interval and as function of carbon sources utilized by microbes.