Biotechnology of wastewater microorganisms

Microbes are tiny organisms serve as the backbone of several important biotechnological applications.

The rapid growth and multiplication of microbes allow for the quick production of large microbial communities, in turn allowing scientific investigation over several generations in a short time period. Microbes can be genetically modified to produce high-value end-products, as energy sources (e.g. hydrogen, biofuels)   or drug precursors (e.g. artemisinin, taxadiene). (Frisk, 2011).

Microorganisms in different wastewater treatment methods were used to degrade or reduce the concentration “Bioremediation” of hazardous wastes on domestic and industrial wastewater (Divya et al., 2015). Bioremediation is an effective and attractive management tool to recover and treat the environment, in an eco-friendly manner.

Achromobacter sp. Isolated from rural domestic wastewater have ability to utilize the environmental hormone di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) (Jin et al.,2015).

Eight bacterial isolates were isolated from domestic wastewater plant related to the genera Bacillus sp. and Paenibacillus sp. have ability to produce amylase enzyme (Garode and Sonune, 2013)

Heavy metal tolerant novel bacterium, Bacillus malikii sp was isolated from tannery effluent wastewater which have ability to tolerate 0–12 % NaCl (w/v) and high concentration from heavy metals as (Cr 1200 ppm, Pb 1800 ppm and Cu 1200 ppm) in tryptic soya agar medium (Abbas et al., 2015).

Cupriavidus pinatubonensis (designated ALS1280), Pigmentiphaga sp. (ALS1172), Pseudomonas sp. BWDY (ALS1279), Pseudomonas mendocina (ALS1131), and Pseudomonas putida (ALS1267) were isolated from wastewater treatment plant, these bacteria have the ability to use furans as the sole carbon Source (Lee et al., 2016).

Enterobacter sp. and Bacillus anthracis PS2010 were isolated from industrial wastewater which have ability to biosynthesize the lead nanoparticles ((Elshanshoury et al., 2012)).

Klebsiella sp. 3S1 which isolated from wastewater treatment plant may be employed to be used as an inexpensive bio-sorbent, highly efficient for Pb(II) uptake. Maximum bio-sorption capacity (140.19mg/g dry cell) was obtained at 25∘C and an initial pH of 5 (Muñoz et al., 2015).

Pectinatus frisingensis, Pectinatus portalensis and Klebsiella oxytoca were isolated from coconut wastewater factory for ethanol, butanol and 2, 3 butanediol production (Lertsriwong et al., 2016).

The use of specific bacteria has often been investigated to remove Polychlorinated biphenyls or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Kuppusamy et al., 2016).

Li et al., (2013) studied the degradation of carbamazepine (CBZ) by a bacterium which can use CBZ as its sole source of carbon and energy. This strain was identified as Pseudomonas sp. by the 16S rRNA gene sequence. Pseudomonas sp. CBZ-4 can effectively degrade CBZ under optimal conditions (pH 7.0, 10° C, mechanical stirring). After 144 h of incubation, the average removal rate of CBZ reached 46.6% (Li et al., 2013).