Abstract
Phenol and its derivatives are naturally as well as synthetically occurring contaminants in the environment. There are a number of anthropogenic causes for the occurrence of phenol in the environment. These compounds are present in a lot of polymers, drugs, dyes, disinfectants and other organic substances. A wide variety of phenolic compounds are released into the environment in great amounts along with effluents from petroleum industries, pulp and paper mills, metal and rubber industries etc. Phenol toxicity can lead to irritation of skin followed by necrosis; it can cause damage to kidneys, liver, muscle etc. and can even lead to death. A number of methods have been used for Phenol removal from environment out of which enzymatic degradation is an efficient one. The bacterial enzyme Phenol hydroxylase breaks down phenol into catechol, which is also a toxic compound. Catechol is further metabolized catechol by different microbial strains via either ortho-fission pathway or meta-fission pathway using the enzymes catechol 1,2-dioxygenase or catechol 2,3-dioxygenase respectively. Currently a number of bacterial species have been known to degrade phenol; namely Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Alcaligenes, Bacillus, Micrococcus etc. This chapter deals with the bacterial strains that are capable of phenol metabolism, the mechanism of action, and the applications of bacteria in phenol bio detoxification.
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All pathways in this chapter have been adapted from Meta-cyc, the curated database of experimentally elucidated metabolic pathways (Caspi et al. 2014).
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Kynadi, A.S., Suchithra, T.V. (2017). Bacterial Degradation of Phenol to Control Environmental Pollution. In: Patra, J., Vishnuprasad, C., Das, G. (eds) Microbial Biotechnology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6847-8_11
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