Anaerobic biodegradation of aromatic compounds

Abstract

Many aromatic compounds and their monomers are existing in nature. Besides they are introduced in to the environment by human activity. The conversion of these aromatic compounds is mainly an aerobic process because of the involvement of molecular oxygen in ring fission and as an electron acceptor. Recent literatures indicated that ring fission of monomers and obligomers mainly occurs in anaerobic environments through anaerobic respiration with nitrate, sulphate, Carbon dioxide or carbonate as electron acceptors. These anaerobic processes will help to work out the better situation for bioremediation of contaminated environments. While there are plenty of efforts to reduce the release of these chemicals to the environment, already contaminated sites need to be remediated not only to restore the sites but to prevent the leachates spreading to nearby environment. Basically microorganisms are better candidates for breakdown of these compounds because of their wider catalytic mechanisms and the ability to act even in the absence of oxygen. These microbes can be grouped based on their energy mechanisms. Normally, the aerobic counterparts employ the enzymes like mono-and-di - oxygenases. The end product is basically catechol, which further may be metabolised to CO₂ by means of quinones reductases cycles. In the absense of reductases compounds, the reduced catechols tend to become oxidised to form many quinone compounds. The quinone products are more recalcitrant and lead to other aesthetic problems like colour in water, unpleasant odour, etc. On the contrary, in the reducing environment this process is prevented and in a cascade of pathways, the cleaved products are converted to acetyl co-A to be integrated into other central metabolite paths.<br> The central metabolite of anaerobic degradation is invariably co-Athio-esters of benzoic acid or hydroxy benzoic acid. The benzene ring undergoes various substitution and addition reactions to form chloro', nitro', methyl' compounds. For complete degradation the side chains must be removed first and then the benzene ring is activated by carboxylation or hydroxylation or co-A thioester formation. In the next step the activated ring is converted to a form that can be collected in the central pool of metabolism. The third step is the channeling reaction in which the products of the catalysis are directed into central metabolite pool. The enzymes involved in these mechanisms are mostly benzyl co-A ligase, benzyl alcohol dehydrogenase. Other enzymes involved in this path are yet to be purified though many of the reactions products that have been theoretically postulated have been identified. This is mainly due to the instability of intermediate compounds as well as the association of the enzyme substrate is femoral and experimental conditions need to be sophisticated further for isolation of these enzymes. The first structural genes of benzoate and hydroxy benzoate ligases were isolated from <i>Rhodopseudomonas polustris</i>. This gene cluster of 30 kb size found in <i>Rhodopseudomonas palustris</i> coded for the Bad A protein. Similarly, some of the bph A,B ,C and D cluster of genes coding for the degradation of pentachlorobenzenes were located in <i>Pseudomonas pseudoalgaligenes KF 707.</i>