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Heavy Metal Resistance in Prokaryotes: Mechanism and Application

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Microbial Communities and their Interactions in the Extreme Environment

Part of the book series: Microorganisms for Sustainability ((MICRO,volume 32))

Abstract

Metal-rich natural and artificial habitats are extreme environments for the development and evolution of unique microbial communities, which have adapted to the toxic levels of the metals. Diverse bacterial groups have developed abilities to deal with the toxic metals by bioaccumulation of the metal ions inside the cell actively or passively, extracellular precipitation, efflux of heavy metals outside to the microbial cell surface, biotransformation of toxic metals to less toxic forms, and metal adsorption on the cell wall. Metalophilic microbes are found in all bacterial and archaeal groups studied, but mostly appear among aerobic and facultative anaerobic chemoheterotrophic and chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms of the Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, Actinobacteria, Cuprividus, Acidobacterium, Acidithiobacillus, Thiobacillus, Ferroplasma, and Sulfolobus genera. The phenomenon of microbial heavy metal resistance has fundamental importance and is particularly relevant in microbial ecology, especially in connection with the roles of microbes in biogeochemical cycling of heavy metals and in the bioremediation of metal-contaminated environments. The heavy metal resistance mechanisms and different applications of metal resistant/metalophilic bacteria and archaea have been expounded deeply in this chapter.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Eurasia Programme of the Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Education (CPEA-2011/10081, CPEA-LT-2016/10095) and partially supported by Research Grant from MESCS Science Committee of Armenia, to AM (19YR-1F065), and the Armenian National Science and Education Fund based in New York, USA, to AM (ANSEF-NS-microbio-3869 and 4619).

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  1. Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia

    Armine Margaryan & Hovik Panosyan

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Nils-Kåre Birkeland

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  1. Armine Margaryan
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  2. Hovik Panosyan
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  3. Nils-Kåre Birkeland
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Correspondence to Armine Margaryan .

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  1. Faculty of Biology, National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

    Dilfuza Egamberdieva

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Nils-Kare Birkeland

  3. School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Wen-Jun Li

  4. Faculty of Biology, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia

    Hovik Panosyan

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Margaryan, A., Panosyan, H., Birkeland, NK. (2021). Heavy Metal Resistance in Prokaryotes: Mechanism and Application. In: Egamberdieva, D., Birkeland, NK., Li, WJ., Panosyan, H. (eds) Microbial Communities and their Interactions in the Extreme Environment. Microorganisms for Sustainability, vol 32. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3731-5_13

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