Organophosphates (OPs) form the bulk of pesticides that are currently in use around the world accounting for more than 30% of the world market. They also form the core for many nerve-based warfare agents including sarin and soman. The widespread use and the resultant build-up of OP pesticides and chemical nerve agents has led to the development of major health problems due to their extremely toxic interaction with any biological system that encounters them. Growing concern over the accumulation of OP compounds in our food products, in the soils from which they are harvested and in wastewater run-off has fuelled a growing interest in microbial biotechnology that provides cheap, efficient OP detoxification to supplement expensive chemical methods. In this article, we review the current state of knowledge of OP pesticide and chemical agent degradation and attempt to clarify confusion over identification and nomenclature of two major families of OP-degrading enzymes through a comparison of their structure and function. The isolation, characterization, utilization and manipulation of the major detoxifying enzymes and the molecular basis of degradation of OP pesticides and chemical nerve agents are discussed as well as the achievements and technological advancements made towards the bioremediation of such compounds.
A bacterial strain designated in this study as POXN01 was found to be capable of degrading the synthetic organophosphorus pesticides paraoxon and methyl parathion. The strain was initially isolated through enrichment technique from rice field soil near Harlingen, Texas. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA, gyrB and rpoD gene alignments identified the POXN01 isolate as a new strain of Pseudomonas putida, which is closely related to the recently discovered nicotine-degrading strain Pseudomonas putida S16. While being unable to metabolize nicotine, the POXN01 isolate was observed to actively proliferate using monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in particular toluene, as nutrients. Search for the genetic determinants of paraoxon catabolism revealed the presence of organophosphorus-degrading gene, opd, identical to the one from Sphingobium fuliginis (former Flavobacterium sp. ATCC 27551). Assimilation of aromatic compounds likely relies on phc ARKLMNOPQ gene cluster for phenol, benzene and toluene catabolism, and on benRABCDKGEF cluster for benzoate catabolism. The observed versatility of POXN01 strain in degradation of xenobiotics makes it useful for the multi-purpose bioremediation of contaminated sites in both agricultural and industrial environmental settings.
P. nitroreducens DF05 is a Gram negative, motile, aerobic, rod-shaped and psychrotrophic bacterium that was isolated from contaminated San Jacinto River sediment near River Terrace Park in Channelview, Texas. The draft genome of strain DF05 consists of a total of 192 contigs assembled at the scaffold level totaling 6,487,527 bp and encoding for 5862 functional proteins, 1116 of which are annotated as hypothetical proteins. The bacterial chromosome has a GC content of 65.15% and contains 22 rRNA and 70 tRNA loci. In addition, approximately 142 proteins localized on the bacterial chromosome are associated with metabolism of aromatic compounds. A single plasmid approximately 95 kb in size was also detected carrying copies of RNA genes and multiple phage assembly proteins.
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