Isolation and characterization of Indigenous Bacilli strains from an oil refinery wastewater with potential applications for phenol/cresol bioremediation.

Phenolic compounds are frequently occurring in wastewaters from various industrial processes at high concentrations, imposing prominent risk to aquatic biosphere and human health. Bioremediation has been proven to be an effective approach to remove these compounds, and hunting for functional organisms is still of primary importance to develop efficient processes. In this study, we report several newly isolated bacillus strains with superior performances in metabolizing phenols, one of which showed paramount efficiencies to metabolize phenol at concentrations up to 1200 mg L-1 and could simultaneously degrade a wide range of other phenolic compounds. The genes encoding for phenol hydroxylase (PH) and catechol-2,3-dioxygenase (C23O) have been detected and characterized, evidencing that phenol degradation occurs via the meta pathway. The GC level of the PH gene was found to be much higher than that of genes from other Bacilli but was quite close to that of the genes from Rhodococcus, and the induction of both enzymes by phenols was confirmed by RT-PCR experiments. We intend to believe this novel strain might be promising to serve as preferred organisms for developing more robust and efficient bioremediation processes of degrading phenolic compounds due to its validated performance.

Emerging Trends in Genetic Engineering of Microalgae for Commercial Applications.

Recently, microalgal biotechnology has received increasing interests in producing valuable, sustainable and environmentally friendly bioproducts. The development of economically viable production processes entails resolving certain limitations of microalgal biotechnology, and fast evolving genetic engineering technologies have emerged as new tools to overcome these limitations. This review provides a synopsis of recent progress, current trends and emerging approaches of genetic engineering of microalgae for commercial applications, including production of pharmaceutical protein, lipid, carotenoids and biohydrogen, etc. Photochemistry improvement in microalgae and CO2 sequestration by microalgae via genetic engineering were also discussed since these subjects are closely entangled with commercial production of the above mentioned products. Although genetic engineering of microalgae is proved to be very effective in boosting performance of production in laboratory conditions, only limited success was achieved to be applicable to industry so far. With genetic engineering technologies advancing rapidly and intensive investigations going on, more bioproducts are expected to be produced by genetically modified microalgae and even much more to be prospected.