Middle East Journal of Applied Science & Technology (MEJAST)

(Peer Reviewed International Journal) Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 54-59, July-September 2019

Role of Bioremediation in Environment

Tehmina Bibi1, Shazia Manzoor1, Sadia Azhar1, Muhammad Saeed1 & Muhammad Asif Raheem1*
1
* Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan-60800, Pakistan.

Article Received: 19 February 2019 Article Accepted: 11 July 2019 Article Published: 17 August 2019

ABSTRACT

Bioremediation is the process in which the micro-organisms are used to degrade the pollutants from the environment. Plants and micro-organisms are
used to clean up the environment. Bioremediation is carried out by microbes and their metabolisms are used to remove the contaminants. Microbes
have the ability to resolve the issue of contaminated ecosystem1. To improve or better living style the degradation of contaminated areas is very
important. Importance of the biodegradation is increasing due to the expensiveness of the chemicals. So bioremediation is the best choice. The
effluents should be degraded from the environment because they are very dangerous and have a bad impact on human beings. These pollutants sink
into the water and cause pollution. These pollutants are treated with the help of microbes in bioremediation process. It is the best method because it is
cost effective and eco-friendly. Different techniques of bioremediation are used to convert toxic substances into less toxic substances.
Keywords: Pollutants, Degradation, Toxicity, Metabolites, Biomass, Microbes, Industrialization, Crop cultivation, Techniques.

INTRODUCTION

Bioremediation is the process in which we utilize the micro-organisms to degrade the pollutants from the
environment. Plants and micro-organisms are used to clean up the environment. Metabolites are used to degrade the
contaminants. The mechanism also depends on several parameters pH, temperature and moisture. By changing
these parameters process will be disturbed. It converts harmful metals to harmless substances. Bioremediation is
carried out by microbes and their metabolisms are used to remove the contaminants. The process also depends on
types of microbes, pollution and how many metals are present2. This technique is used for the elimination of the
pollutants from the atmosphere by organic procedures. Sometimes the degradation process becomes moderate
because of bacterial inaccessibility3. Many strains of fungi now are grown which are essential in the process of
degradation Such as Penicillium is very important in this process. It can remove solid materials. Many types of it
are settled in various ecosystems. Pollution of solid material is increasing rapidly because of the man activities.
Effect of this pollution on the health of animal and cause difficulties to the ecosystem. Solid material degradation
procedure using fungal species is an old mechanism. It involves the microbes to convert more toxic material to less
toxic using different procedures4. Pollution in the environment is increasing rapidly in the good settle states.
Pollution of oil is an alarming condition nowadays. It is very difficult to control it. Different procedures are now
developed to control it. They are costly. Bioremediation is cheap technology which reduces the petroleum
contaminants from contaminated sites. In this microbes are used to remove the contamination from the ecosystem.
Microbes have the ability to resolve the issue of contaminated ecosystem1. To improve or better living style the
degradation of contaminated areas is very important. Importance of the biodegradation is increasing due to the
expensiveness of the chemicals. So bioremediation is the best choice. In various countries (PAHs) is characterized.
it is one of the dangerous chemicals. They are very poisonous and cause cancer disease. They are the main reason
for environmental pollution5. PAHs are removed with the help of Populus sp. from the environment in a
rhizoremediation. It is a process in which microorganisms are utilized to remove the contaminants from the
environment. Due to man activities, pollution and issues are sharply increasing in well settle states.
Microorganisms in the remediation process decrease the PAHs from the polluted environment6.

54 | P a g e ISSN (Online): 2582- 0974 Website: www.mejast.com

 Middle East Journal of Applied Science & Technology (MEJAST)

(Peer Reviewed International Journal) Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 54-59, July-September 2019

EFFLUENTS WHICH ARE TREATED IN THE BIOREMEDIATION PROCESS

In heavy metals, mercury is very harmful metal. It is very dangerous for the ecosystem and animals. It is released
from plants, industries, and paints. The main reason for its poisonousness it's grouping to sulfide, oxide, hydroxide,
and chloride. A lot of procedures are applied to treat it but they are costly as compare to the bioremediation which
has no high rates and no side effects on the ecosystem. It is a suitable method in which we utilize microbes to treat
effluents7. Chlorimuron-ethyl causes serious difficulties. It exerts a bad impact on the earth and on the production
of crops. Chlorimuron-ethyl also disturbs the natural flora of soil which led to the lack of energy production and
nutrients. A number of microorganisms are used to treat it8. Hexavalent Chromium is very poisonous. It causes
cancer and other diseases in animals. It occurs in wastewater but its main sources are leather tanning, electroplating,
metal cleaning, and wood preservation. Many methods are applied to detoxify it but they are very expensive.
Poisonous chromate is degraded in the bioremediation process with the help of natural means. Microbes are used to
treat it9. The textile industry is hardly working to fulfill the needs of the population. As a result, it produces many
effluents because it utilizes toxic chemicals and colors. They spread into the ecosystem and disturbs nature. They
are treated by natural means. Fungus species phanerophyte chrysosporium are used to degrade them10. MCP
(di-methyl (E)-1-2-methylcrbamoylvinylphosphate) is a pesticide utilized for the pest of cotton, sugar cane,
peanuts, ornamental and tobacco. It is very poisonous. Presently it is used in India as a pesticide. MCP sinks in
water and creates several problems for microorganisms. It should be degraded from environment11.

ROLE OF MICROBES IN BIOREMEDIATION

Plastic degradation is a process in which complete or half change of organic carbon in biogas and biomass that
relate to the activity of microorganisms that have the ability to employ the plastic as a carbon source. It depends on
the respiratory condition and microorganisms include the biogas will be change. Microorganisms including
bacteria fungi that have ability degrade the plastic. Several types of plastic degrade are present there micrococcus,
Pseudomonas, Rhodococcus and Streptomyces are most important microbes are present use as an energy source.
Biodegradation occurs after the physical and chemical degradation which disturb the structure polymers by
molecular changes. Aging is a process in which plastic alteration due to abiotic degradation. There are different
factors effects include temperature, light, and different chemicals. Biodegradation connects to the biofilm develop
on the surface of plastic and side of the plastic Which increase the pore size that weakens the physical condition of
plastic or release acid compounds that modify the PH inside the pores and result on changing the microstructure of
plastic structure of plastic mixture. Bioaugmentation relates to the activity of extracellular enzymes escape by
bacteria colonizing the polymer surface. These enzymes will lose the molecular weight of the polymer and escape
oligomers and monomers that can be understood by cells. Mineralization is another step in the biodegradation of
plastic elimination outcome in the assimilation of completely oxidized metabolites12.

Microbial degradation is a process in which built-in constitutional microbial communities to finish the
environmental contamination. The process at which the contaminants detoxified depends on the many types of
factors including the makeup of native microbial group, nature, and extent of pollutants and environmental
conditions. The bioremediation process challenges the different difficult changing, understand the destiny of

55 | P a g e ISSN (Online): 2582- 0974 Website: www.mejast.com

 Middle East Journal of Applied Science & Technology (MEJAST)

(Peer Reviewed International Journal) Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 54-59, July-September 2019

environmental pollutants. There are many applications for a finding of bioremediation process to understand the
right process. Such applications are proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics, metabolomics. The different type
of microbes has been describing that carry out different environmental contaminants. For years microbiologist has
tried to find out the good methods to discover the microbial diversity in the environmental sample. A number of
molecular methods are select for this aim. The development of the investigation of the 16s rRNA gene sequence
importantly increases our ability to understand them and traverse the microbial world. By using different culturing
methods we isolate the small amount of bacteria gel electrophoresis is the best method for applying to the microbial
diversity. And it allows the separation of the 16s rRNA13.

The heavy metals are sometimes used to metallic chemical elements of high level and show harmful for living
things. Toxicity is not a useful property of heavy metals. Some heavy metals are nutritive at a low level and
sometimes are harmful to higher amount .copper is very beneficial for living organisms and mercury and lead are
not good for living organisms .some heavy metals are not beneficial for living organisms and not have a positive
effect. Some heavy metals have a harmful effect on living organisms for example brain tumor cancer and
sometimes death .some metals are very high cost and not easily available for a good result. Metals should be;
provide good safety to living organisms and the environment. It is easy to plow. It has tolerant to collect heavy
metals. Many kinds of batches are helpful for bioremediation process .bioreactors is one of the techniques that help
and contains biological agents for this purpose. Different type of bioreactors is present there. Traditionally and
immobilized microbial bioreactors used for microorganisms. High biomass concentration is very difficult to
regulate these bioreactors. In situ repairing of heavy metals could b take place by using a solution of acids.
Sometime biofilm is damaged due to use of high concentration of detergent due to this stability is lost. Easily
separated from treated water14.

Some microorganisms have the capacity to digest the chemical compounds that cannot generate a part of
metabolism that is present in the surrounding. There are many possibilities are present in bioremediation by
bioinformatics. There are many sources are present .chemical structure of organic compounds sequence, function.
The first study is started by a large amount of data of an individual of gene and protein. It is understood by studying
it separately .some useful projects are carried out and stored a large amount of data in this subject. The current
system for gaining new information from the database allows biodegradative techniques for one compound. It has
the ability to found the pathways between these compounds and central metabolism. According to no of pathways
length of pathways all the enzymes that are present in organisms that present in organisms. All the elements are
hyperlinked corresponding information pages in meta-router pathways15.

Biodegradation of oil spilled take place by the treatment of inorganic compounds such as phosphorus and nitrogen.
In these environments, bacteria are a very important agent of hydrocarbon degradation. The reaction or archaeal
community to oil spilled on beaches and to bioremediation treatment have not been investigated. Now archeal is
considered to live in the marine environment and live in much nonextreme and oxygen taking ecosystem according
to molecular analysis. At high-level distribution, it is considered that organisms have ecological significance low
temperature in the environment. Archie has been detected in different oil dependent environment such as crude oil,

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 Middle East Journal of Applied Science & Technology (MEJAST)

(Peer Reviewed International Journal) Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 54-59, July-September 2019

petroleum. If the archeal number decreases the increase the heavy metal contaminated soils and different structure
of community level16.

TECHNIQUES OF BIOREMEDIATION

Environmental pollution has been increased with the passage of time due to the increasing population,
industrialization and crop cultivation such as the use of insecticides and pesticides to meet the demand of increasing
population the cultivation of crops have been increased due to which usage of pesticides and insecticide has been
maximum .for this purpose pollutants in the environment also pollutes the population. for the removal of these
pollutants from the environment is called bioremediation researchers different type of bioremediation and the usage
of bioremediation .these type of techniques depends on the nature of pollutants. Native microbes exit in a polluted
environment. No one bioremediation type enough for sever bullet to restore environmental pollutants. The types of
definition has been used for bioremediation .sometimes bioremediation and biodegradation interconnected to each
other because both have physical and chemical properties of bioremediation it is cost-effective eco-friendly and
easy to handle .we can define bioremediation as , The use of either naturally occurring or deliberately introduced
micro-organisms to consume and breakdown environmental pollutants in order to clean a polluted site. The kind of
bioremediation depends upon the type of environmental pollutants such as organo-chemicals, chlorinated
compounds, dyes, greenhouse gases and heavy metals.

Ex-situ bioremediation technique

This type of bioremediation including the uncovering pollutants from polluted environment and transferred another
place for degradation.

Biopile

This type of bioremediation involves providing the maximum amount of microbes to increase process degradation
at above ground pollutants another word mixing native microbes, substrate and temperature enhance the biological
activity of microbes.

Land farming

Land farming is an easy and simplest method to degrade environmental pollutants. Sometimes it considered in situ
bioremediation and ex-situ bioremediation. This depends upon the type of treatment or degradation. Whenever
excavated polluted site treated that is ex-situ technique.

In situ-bioremediation

These techniques depend upon the degradation of polluted materials at the site or place of pollution. In this
technique, it is not necessary for any voting site because it consists of very small or no difficulties in soil
construction.

Bioventing

This is the technique of bioremediation which include O2 to increase the biological activity in controlled
ecosystem.in bioventing nutrients and moisture provided to indigenous microbes to enhance the process. The

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 Middle East Journal of Applied Science & Technology (MEJAST)

(Peer Reviewed International Journal) Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 54-59, July-September 2019

ultimate function of microbes in bioremediation is to convert the toxic substance into a less toxic substance. It
discovered two types of air injection rates used in bioremediation i.e. high air injection rate and low air injection
rate. The high air injection rate involves the maximum removal of toluene than low air injection rate. In another
word, the high air flow rate does not bring about maximum biodegradation and not make maximum pollutants.
Biotransformation is more efficient process17.

Bioaugmentation

The presence of fungicides in the natural ecosystem, either proceed from calculated activity or not, has become
conventional remark to many ecosystems include soil. This can be safe by taking sufficient measures to come clean
environment from naturally occurring pollutants especially fungicides. Although a study was conducted to examine
the impact of bioaugmentation of soil unshielded to Azoxystrobin on its degradation and animation of the enzyme
catalase, urease, and acidic phosphatase18.

CONCLUSION

The environment is polluted very rapidly due to activities of man, industrial processes and heavy metals. These
pollutants are very dangerous and cause cancer in the animal population. They can be degraded very rapidly. Many
methods are used to detoxify pollutants. But they are very expensive and cause toxicity because they use chemicals.
On the other hand, bioremediation is the best method because it is cost effective and eco-friendly. It uses microbes
to detoxify the toxic substances from the environment. Different techniques of bioremediation are used to convert
toxic substances into less toxic substances. Metabolites are used to degrade the contaminants. The mechanism also
depends on several parameters pH, temperature and moisture. By changing these parameters process will be
disturbed. Many strains of fungi now are grown which are essential in the process of degradation. In biodegradation
process, we use the microorganisms which cannot disturb the natural flora of the soil. It is a biological process. To
improve or better living style the degradation of contaminated areas is very important.

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