Engineering plants for the phytodetoxification of explosives |
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Authors: | Susan J Rosser Christopher E French Neil C Bruce |
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Institution: | (1) Insititute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, CB2 1QT Cambridge, UK |
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Abstract: | Summary Widespread contaimination of the environment by explosives resulting from the manufacture, disposal and testing of munitions
is becoming a matter of increasing concern. Most explosives are considered to be a major hazard to biological systems due
to their toxic and mutagenic effects. Interest on the bioremediation of land contaminated with explosives has recently been
focused on phytoremediation. Unfortunately., whilst plants have many advantages for the remediation of contaminated land and
water, they lack the catabolic versatility which enables microorganisms to mineralize such a wide diversity of xenobiotic
compounds. This raised the interesting question as to whether the impressive biodegradative capabilities of soil bacteria
could be combined with the high biomass and stability of plants to yield an optimal system for in situ bioremediation of explosive residues in soil. Our investigation into the degradation of explosive residues by soil bacteria
resulted in the isolation of Enterobacter cloacae PB2, which is capable of utilizing nitrate ester explosives such as pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and nitroglycerin
as the sole source of nitrogen for growth. We have successfully introduced PETN reductase, the enzyme initiating explosive
degradation in this organism, into plants to create transgenic plants that degrade explosives. Since the bacterial degradative
pathways for many classes of organic pollutant have been elucidated, this may be a generally applicable method of achieving
bioremediation of contaminated soil in the environment. |
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Keywords: | phytoremediation explosives transgenic plants PETN reductase |
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