Bioremediation

Bioremediation is the use of living microorganisms to degrade environmental pollutants or prevent pollution. It is a technology for removing pollutants from the environment, restoring contaminated sites and preventing future pollution. However, it has global, regional, and local application. The basis of bioremediation is the enormous natural capacity of microorganisms to degrade organic compounds. This capacity could be improved by applying the GMMs.

In Japan, academic, industrial and governmental research is tightly coordinated for global application of environmental biotechnology. Researchers are exploiting large scale application of bioremediation that can affect desert formation, global climate change and the life cycle of materials. Attempts are being made to develop microorganisms that can help reverse desert formation. This work is based on developing biopolymers that retain water and reverse desert formation. Alcaligens luteus is being used to produce 'superbioabsorbenf, a polysaccharide which is composed of glucose and glucuronic acid. These can absorb and hold more than thousand times of its own weight of water.

Using the informations from fundamental research bioremediation technology has been used to remove environmentally hazardous chemicals, accumulated in their cells or detoxify them into non-toxic forms. Several members of algae, fungi and bacteria are known to solubilize, transport and deposit the metals, and detoxify dyes and complex chemicals.

The toxic waste materials remain in vapor, liquid or solid phases, therefore, bioremediation technology varies accordingly whether the waste material involved is in its natural setting or is removed and transported into a fermenter (bioreactor). On the basis of removal and transportation of wastes for treatment, basically there are two methods: in situ bioremediation and ex situ bioremediation.