Role of PSEUDOMONAS in Bioremediation - A Weapon to Tackle Oil Spills
Oil spills: An oil spill is a leakage from oceangoing tankers,
pipelines or other oil sources. It occurs very frequently and causes enormous
ecological harm.
Oil spill occurs due to
the intentional or unintentional release of petroleum hydrocarbons of any form
into the environment due to human activity. It is considered as a form of
pollution and often refers to oil spills in marine ecosystem or coastal areas.
The spill can originate from oil tankers, off-shore platforms,
oil rigs and even the heavier fuels and refined petroleum products.
The spilling of oil in the oceans destroys not
only the earth’s ecosystem but also an extremely negative impact or living organisms.
The toxic substances, in fact, threaten the mere existence of marine life.
Unfortunately, oil spilled by tankers during
loading/unloading, discharging, ballasting, tank cleaning, or near offshore
platforms, from transportation, construction, to processes in chemical
industries drilling rigs and wells, are the foremost causes responsible for ocean
pollution. Fundamentally,an oil spill is the release of liquid petroleum
hydrocarbon into the environment on account of human activity.
Spillage takes place mostly from
ships, posing hazards to the aquatic life to a large extent. Oceans get
polluted with harmful chemicals due to seepage of oil (including petrol, diesel
and other types of hydrocarbons) from ship wrecks, mishandling and accidents.
Micro-organisms are known to use several substrates as their
source of energy and play a major role in the natural degradation processes
that take place around us. This helps to break down the waste materials and
convert it into less toxic forms which will mostly be in sync with the
environment. This process is generally termed as biodegradation. Bioremediation
is defined as the process in which microbes are deliberately used to clean up
the environment and degrade waste or chemicals that are hazardous to the
environment and can affect the different life forms in the immediate ecosystem.
The process of removing the toxic
compounds from oceans and soil is quite tedious and expensive at the same time.
Bioremediation is one such effective method of cleaning oils from soil and water, thereby making them safe for
aquatic and terrestrial species.
Bioremediation can be used by bacterial
species, plant species this process is called phytoremediation and by fungal
species is called mycoremediation.
Using bacterial species:
Pseudomonas species are potent
bacteria that are capable of degrading hydrocarbons from petrol and diesel,
thereby reducing the impact of oil spills. P. alcaligenes is capable of breaking down polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons while P. mendocina and P. putida can remove toluene.
P. veronii can degrade large number
of aromatic organic compounds. These oil based compounds are eaten up by the
bacteria as they utilize them as
substrates for carrying out metabolism. These microorganisms occur in abundance
in water bodies and soil and are effective in cleansing oil spills.
With an
increase in density of these microorganisms, the process of bioremediation is
also accentuated. Other Bacteria that help in bioremediation are Achromobacter,
Flavobacterium, Acinetobacter, etc.
The activities of a bacterial specie Pseudomonas putida is found to have the
dominant role in marine ecosystems.
Pseudomonas putida: Pseudomonas putida is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, saprotrophic soil bacterium. It has a very diverse metabolism, including the ability to degrade organic solvents such as toluene. This ability has been put to use in bioremediation, or the use of microorganisms to biodegrade oil.
Pseudomonas putida: Pseudomonas putida is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, saprotrophic soil bacterium. It has a very diverse metabolism, including the ability to degrade organic solvents such as toluene. This ability has been put to use in bioremediation, or the use of microorganisms to biodegrade oil.
Use of P. putida is
preferable to some other Pseudomonas
species capable of such degradation, as it is a safe species of bacteria,
unlike P. aeruginosa, for example, which is an opportunistic human
pathogen. Pseudomonas putida has the ability to degrade and remove toluene and
other monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, e.g. benzene and xylene.
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