Microbial bioremediation of hazardous heavy metals

Abstract

With the passage of time, and with the rise in demands of population Industrialization and new technologies has also augmented. But this rise is now affecting the various ecosystems and thus contaminating the environment. Accumulation of heavy metals has now become a serious concern. Nature has provided us enormous ways for the depletion of these heavy metals viz: leaching, plant uptake, erosion and deflation. But as contaminants are now reached beyond the limit of nature and thus requires alternative ways with lesser or no side effects. The best way out to treat these contaminants is bioremediation. Bioremediation is a process that utilizes plants and microbes for the transformation of heavy metals. There are many microbes that have developed specialized mechanism for heavy metals. Some microbes are found to develop a mechanism through which they are able to sequester and immobilize metals, while some are found to enhance the solubility of metals, some of them oxidizes or reduces them to non toxic or comparatively lesser toxic forms. Now the genetic engineering is also used so that the traits of one organism can be transfer to other and thus one microbe can simultaneously detoxify more than one contaminant. In this chapter, efforts have been made to simplify the causes, effects, possible treatment, mechanism and the future aspect of bioremediation.