Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Feb;35(1):1-46.
doi: 10.1007/s10532-023-10042-5. Epub 2023 Jul 12.

Autochthonous psychrophilic hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria and its ecological function in contaminated cold environments

Affiliations
Review

Autochthonous psychrophilic hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria and its ecological function in contaminated cold environments

Pranjal Bharali et al. Biodegradation. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Petroleum hydrocarbon (PH) pollution has mostly been caused by oil exploration, extraction, and transportation activities in colder regions, particularly in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, where it serves as a primary source of energy. Due to the resilience feature of nature, such polluted environments become the realized ecological niches for a wide community of psychrophilic hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (PHcB). In contrast, to other psychrophilic species, PHcB is extremely cold-adapted and has unique characteristics that allow them to thrive in greater parts of the cold environment burdened with PHs. The stated group of bacteria in its ecological niche aids in the breakdown of litter, turnover of nutrients, cycling of carbon and nutrients, and bioremediation. Although such bacteria are the pioneers of harsh colder environments, their growth and distribution remain under the influence of various biotic and abiotic factors of the environment. The review discusses the prevalence of PHcB community in colder habitats, the metabolic processes involved in the biodegradation of PH, and the influence of biotic and abiotic stress factors. The existing understanding of the PH metabolism by PHcB offers confirmation of excellent enzymatic proficiency with high cold stability. The discovery of more flexible PH degrading strategies used by PHcB in colder environments could have a significant beneficial outcome on existing bioremediation technologies. Still, PHcB is least explored for other industrial and biotechnological applications as compared to non-PHcB psychrophiles. The present review highlights the pros and cons of the existing bioremediation technologies as well as the potential of different bioaugmentation processes for the effective removal of PH from the contaminated cold environment. Such research will not only serve to investigate the effects of pollution on the basic functional relationships that form the cold ecosystem but also to assess the efficacy of various remediation solutions for diverse settings and climatic conditions.

Keywords: Bioremediation; Hydrocarbonoclastic; Petroleum hydrocarbon; Pollution; Psychrophilic.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

References

    1. Abbasian F, Lockington R, Mallavarapu M, Naidu R (2015) A Comprehensive review of aliphatic hydrocarbon biodegradation by bacteria. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 176:670–699. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-015-1603-5 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Adams GO, Fufeyin PT, Okoro SE et al (2015a) Bioremediation, biostimulation and bioaugmention: a review. Int J Environ Bioremed Biodegrad 3:28–39
    1. Adams GO, Fufeyin PT, Okoro SE, Ehinomen I (2015b) Bioremediation, biostimulation and bioaugmention: a review. Int J Environ Bioremediat Biodegrad 3:28–39
    1. Agersted MD, Møller EF, Gustavson K (2018) Bioaccumulation of oil compounds in the high-Arctic copepod Calanus hyperboreus. Aquat Toxicol 195:8–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2017.12.001 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aguiar-Pulido V, Huang W, Suarez-Ulloa V et al (2016) Metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metabolomics approaches for microbiome analysis. Evol Bioinform Online 12:5–16. https://doi.org/10.4137/EBO.S36436 - DOI - PubMed - PMC

LinkOut - more resources