Targeted metagenomics demonstrates the ecological role of IS1071 in bacterial community adaptation to pesticide degradation.

IS1071, an insertion element that primarily flanks organic xenobiotic degradation genes in cultured isolates, is suggested to play a key role in the formation and distribution of bacterial catabolic pathway gene clusters. However, in environmental settings, the identity of the IS1071 genetic cargo and its correspondence to the local selective conditions remain unknown. To respond, we developed a long-range PCR approach amplifying accessory genes between two IS1071 copies from community DNA followed by amplicon sequencing.

Application of biodegradation in mitigating and remediating pesticide contamination of freshwater resources: state of the art and challenges for optimization.

In recent years, the application of pesticide biodegradation in remediation of pesticide-contaminated matrices moved from remediating bulk soil to remediating and mitigating pesticide pollution of groundwater and surface water bodies. Specialized pesticide-degrading microbial populations are used, which can be endogenous to the ecosystem of interest or introduced by means of bioaugmentation. It involves (semi-)natural ecosystems like agricultural fields, vegetated filter strips, and riparian wetlands and man-made ecosystems like on-farm biopurification systems, groundwater treatment systems, and dedicated modules in drinking water treatment.

Functional Redundancy of Linuron Degradation in Microbial Communities in Agricultural Soil and Biopurification Systems.

Unlabelled: The abundance of libA, encoding a hydrolase that initiates linuron degradation in the linuron-metabolizing Variovorax sp. strain SRS16, was previously found to correlate well with linuron mineralization, but not in all tested environments. Recently, an alternative linuron hydrolase, HylA, was identified in Variovorax sp.

Genetic and metabolic analysis of the carbofuran catabolic pathway in Novosphingobium sp. KN65.2.

The widespread agricultural application of carbofuran and concomitant contamination of surface and ground waters has raised health concerns due to the reported toxic effects of this insecticide and its degradation products. Most bacteria that degrade carbofuran only perform partial degradation involving carbamate hydrolysis without breakdown of the resulting phenolic metabolite. The capacity to mineralize carbofuran beyond the benzofuran ring has been reported for some bacterial strains, especially sphingomonads, and some common metabolites, including carbofuran phenol, were identified.

Heat-transfer resistance measurement method (HTM)-based cell detection at trace levels using a progressive enrichment approach with highly selective cell-binding surface imprints.

Surface-imprinted polymers allow for specific cell detection based on simultaneous recognition of the cell shape, cell size, and cell membrane functionalities by macromolecular cell imprints. In this study, the specificity of detection and the detection sensitivity for target cells within a pool of non-target cells were analyzed for a cell-specific surface-imprinted polymer combined with a heat-transfer-based read-out technique (HTM). A modified Chinese hamster ovarian cell line (CHO-ldlD) was used as a model system on which the transmembrane protein mucin-1 (MUC1) could be excessively expressed and for which the occurrence of MUC1 glycosylation could be controlled.