Xenobiotics and Other Problematic Chemicals

The word is derived from the Greek ‘xenos’ meaning foreign. Throughout this book the
definition used is that xenobiotics are compounds which are not produced by a biological
procedure and for which no equivalent exists in nature. They present a particular hazard if they
are subject to bioaccumulation especially so if they are fat soluble since that enables them to be
stored in the body fat of organisms providing an obvious route into the food chain. Despite the
fact that these chemicals are man-made, they may still be degraded by micro-organisms if they
fit into one of the following regimes; gratuitous degradation, a process whereby the xenobiot
resembles a natural compound sufficiently closely that it is recognized by the organism’s
enzymes and may be used as a food source, or co-metabolism where the xenobiot is degraded
again by virtue of being recognized by the organism’s enzymes but in this case its catabolism
does not provide energy and so cannot be the sole carbon source. Consequently, cometabolism
may be sustained only if a carbon source is supplied to the organism. The ability of a single
compound to be degraded can be affected by the presence of other contaminants. For example,
heavy metals can affect the ability of organisms to grow, the most susceptible being Gram
positive bacteria, then Gram negative. Fungi are the most resistant and actinomycetes are
somewhere in the middle. This being the case, model studies predicting the rate of contaminant
degradation may be skewed in the field where the composition of the contamination may
invalidate the study in that application. Soil microorganisms, in particular are very versatile and
may quickly adapt to a new food source by virtue of the transmission of catabolic plasmids. Of
all soil bacteria, Pseudomonads seem to have the most highly developed ability to adapt quickly
to new carbon sources. In bacteria, the genes coding for degradative enzymes are often arranged
in clusters, or operons, which usually are carried on a plasmid. This leads to very fast transfer
from one bacterium to another especially in the case of Pseudomonas where many of the
plasmids are self-transmissible. The speed of adaptation is due in part to the exchange of
plasmids but in the case of the archaeans particularly, the pathways they carry, which may have
been latent over thousands of bacterial generations, owe their existence to previous exposure
over millions of years to an accumulated vast range of organic molecules. It is suggested that,
unless there has been evolutionary pressure to the contrary, these latent pathways are retained to
a large extent requiring little modification if any to utilise new xenobiotics. Even so,
bioremediation may require that organisms are altered in some way to make them more suitable
for the task. Briefly, the pathways may be expanded by adaptation to the new molecule, or very
much less commonly, wholescale insertion of ‘foreign’ genes may occur by genetic
manipulation. There have been several cases reported where catabolic pathways have been
expanded in the laboratory. Hedlund and Staley (2001) isolated a strain of Vibrio cyclotrophicus
from marine sediments contaminated with creosote. By supplying the bacteria with only
phenanthrene as a carbon and energy source, the bacteria were trained to degrade several poly
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) although some of these only by co-metabolism with a supplied
carbon source.