Bioremediation : Heavy Metals
WHY THIS IS ON OUR RADAR
Heavy metals persist in the environment, bioaccumulate in organisms, and are toxic at low concentrations. Traditionally they have been removed using chemical or physical methods.
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State-of-the-art:
Industrially, mainly using physicochemical (conventional) methods such as ion exchange, redox, electrochemical techniques, membrane filtration, and precipitation; caveats: not being long-term, cost-effective, and toxicity of by-products.
Some companies use bioremediation: bioaccumulation (intracellular accumulation), biosorption (surface binding), bioaugmentation (use of consortia, biotransformation.
Many environmental engineering companies offer heavy metal remediation solutions in portfolios. Most use non-engineered organisms (either independent or in consortia).
Research: using engineering to enhance accumulation (add transporters, chelating/binding proteins), tolerance (efflux pumps, glutathione), transformation (introduce reduction/oxidation capabilities), and bioaugmentation (production of a molecule required for native degraders to enhance activity).
Pseudomonas (aeruginosa, putida), Bacillus (subtilis, cereus), Cupriavidus (necator, metallidurans), Micrococcus, Citrobacter, Acinetobacter, Arthrobacter.
Opportunities:
Low value in adding genetics. Many key organisms (genera) have genetics.
Potential for identification of metabolic bottlenecks to improve organism’s performance (nutrients, C sources that may induce a higher production of energy in the cell).
Assay needed: analysis of the presence of metals and different forms; using mostly specialized spectroscopy.
Risks:
No risks identified related to growth (conditions or incubation time).
Organisms need to be resistant to high toxic concentrations of heavy metal, high/low pH.
Use of GMOs for environmental applications requires compliance with stringent regulatory frameworks to assess safety, efficacy, and potential risks. If using GMO → ex-situ treatment (increases costs).
Special equipment required for the assay: spectroscopy (Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy; in the $30k)
Strategy for strain selection:
Not focused on genetics but on subapplication.
Select at least 1 organism per application (bioaugmentation, biosorption,...) and metal for onboarding up to 10 organisms.
