Bacterial resistance to toxic elements

Plasmid-determined resistances to compounds of such toxic elements as antimony, arsenic, bismuth, boron, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, lead, nickel, silver, tellurium and zinc occur at high frequencies in natural populations of common bacteria. Considerable study has been made of the resistances to cadmium and to arsenic which result from altered transport and of resistance to mercury which results from biotransformation. However, much remains to be learned about all of these resistances which have potential for use in engineering microbes for applications in biotechnology.