Possibilities of using information resources In bioremediation

Abstract

Bioremediation using microorganisms has a number of advantages over physical and chemical methods of water, soil and atmosphere purification. Microorganisms have a wide range of metabolic capabilities that enable them to convert, modify and utilize toxic pollutants for energy and biomass production. This article shows their participation in the decomposition of various industrial wastes, such as dyes, hydrocarbons, chlorinated aromatic compounds and pesticides, among others. Although the use of microorganisms is an environmentally friendly and promising way of solving environmental threats, many factors affect the effectiveness of bioremediation, such as the chemical nature of pollutants, their accessibility to microorganisms, the physical and chemical characteristics of the environment, as well as the interaction of the destructive organisms with each other. The search for new effective strains or the creation of superdestructors using genetic and protein engineering methods proves to be crucial under current circumstances. This task can be solved using such “tools” as genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics. These technologies require the integration of a huge amount of data, which cannot be achieved without the use of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is used in microbial bioremediation in different ways: analysis of genome sequencing data, identification of protein-coding genes, comparative analysis to identify the function of unknown genes, automatic reconstruction and comparison of metabolic pathways, and study of protein–protein and protein–DNA interactions to understand regulatory mechanisms. This review aims to highlight various resources that store information about possible pathways of microbial metabolism involved in the biodegradation of petroleum products. The use of such information resources can become a starting point for many studies in bioremediation.