Advances in Molecular Biology Approaches to Guage Microbial Communities and Bioremediation at Contaminated Sites

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, research on the microbial degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has resulted in the isolation of numerous genera of bacteria, fungi and algae capable of degrading PAHs. With the development of biology, molecular techniques such as PCR, fingerprinting technique (mainly DGGE/TGGE), ARDRA, TRFLP, FISH, RISA and gene reporter technique have been intensively applied to gain further insight into the mechanism of PAHs degradation. Further recent developments in moleclar microbial ecology like genotypic profiling, ultrafast genome pyrosequencing, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics and metabolomics along with bioinformatics tools offer new tools that facilitates molecular analyses of microbial populations at contaminated and bioremediated sites. Information provided by such analyses aids in the evaluation of the effectiveness of bioremediation and the formulation of strategies that might accelerate bioremediation. The potential for the use of molecular methods in toxicological risk assessment and in developing bioremediation strategies is expanding rapidly as new methodologies become available. In this paper we present an overview of some molecular methods we feel have the most potential for use in assessment and monitoring in the field.