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Environmental Biotechnology Take-Home Quiz

Questions:

 Identify an organic pollutant in your area (can be industrial, domestic, etc.)

 Identify the structure, composition of the organic pollutant.
 Could the pollutants be degraded aerobically or anaerobically.
 What would the pathway of degradation look like?
 The microorganism that can be used to biodegrade it?

The organic Pollutants

Waste Cooking Palm Oil, common cooking oil in Indonesia
The Structure and composition:
Fatty Acids

(Pietro, Mannu, Mele, 2020)

The free fatty acids from waste cooking oil are hydrocarbon chains that are derived from triacylglycerol
by cleavage of ester bonds through high temperatures. The structure of Free Fatty Acids from vegetable
oils is alike with those petroleum oil hydrocarbons, and the effects of the environments are similar, such
as harming aquatic and wildlife (EPA, n.d.)

Degradation of Free Fatty Acids

Fatty acid are commonly degraded in the beta oxidation, since it’s an aliphatic compound, it can be
degraded through anaerobic or aerobic means. Aerobic pathways are much quicker than anaerobic
pathways. The degradation itself can be hindered if the free fatty acids formed huge layer on the water,
which decrease the contact of microbes with their substrates, and hinder the oxygen intake in the
water.
Pathway of Degradation

Fig1. Schematic representation of the fatty acid degradation pathway (Jimenez-Diaz, Caballero,& Segura,
2011)
 Fig 2. Schematic representation of degradation of unsaturated fatty acids (Jimenez-Diaz, Caballero,&
Segura, 2011)

Figure 1 Is the pathways degradation of fatty acids through betta oxidation cycle which are found in
aerobic condition, while figure 2 Is the pathways degradation of fatty acid in anaerobic condition. Later
on those acetyl-Coa will be used for further metabolism in the bacteria.

Microbial Degradation
There are various hydrocarbonclastic microbes that can degrade the free fatty acids of waste cooking oil.
Micrococcus sp. L II 61,Pseudomonas putida T1-8, Bacillus subtilis 3KP, &Acinetobacter sp. P2-1 are
hydrocabonclastics microbes obtained by Ni’matuzahroh et al. (2013) that can use aliphatic and
aromatic as food sources.

Besides that other hydrocarbonclastics that are found in oil waste in the marine or other contaiminant
sources, such as in marine, might possibly work with waste vegetable oil as well, due to the similarity of
structure. Alcanivorax, Marinobacter, Thallassolituus, Cycloclasticus,and Oleispira are examples of
obligate hydrocarbonoclastic bacterias (OHCB) found in polluted marine that eats petroleum
hydrocarbons (Yakimov, Timmis,& Golyshin, 2007).

References:

Chew, S. C., & Nyam, K. L. (2020). Refining of edible oils. In Lipids and Edible Oils (pp. 213-241).
Academic Press.

Di Pietro, M. E., Mannu, A., & Mele, A. (2020). NMR determination of free fatty acids in vegetable
oils. Processes, 8(4), 410.

Jimenez-Diaz, L., Caballero, A., & Segura, A. (2017). Pathways for the degradation of fatty acids in
bacteria. Aerobic utilization of hydrocarbons, oils and lipids, 10, 978-3.

Taufiqurrahmi, N., Mohamed, A. R., & Bhatia, S. (2011). Production of biofuel from waste cooking
palm oil using nanocrystalline zeolite as catalyst: Process optimization studies. Bioresource technology,
102(22), 10686-10694.

Triawan, A., Ni’matuzahroh, & Supriyanto, A. (2017, June). Effects of the combination between bio-
surfactant product types and washing times on the removal of crude oil in nonwoven fabric. In AIP
Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1854, No. 1, p. 020037). AIP Publishing LLC.

Vegetable Oils and Animal Fats | US EPA. (2021). Retrieved 29 September 2021, from
https://www.epa.gov/emergency-response/vegetable-oils-and-animal-fats

Yakimov, M. M., Timmis, K. N., & Golyshin, P. N. (2007). Obligate oil-degrading marine bacteria.
Current opinion in biotechnology, 18(3), 257-266.