How microscopy techniques can contribute to understand bacterial responses to environmental pollutants?

FERNANDEZ M; AGOSTINI E; MORALES G; GONZÁLEZ P.S

Workshop; . Imaging Techniques for Biotechnological and Biomedical Applications Workshop; 2016

Several industrial operations released highly dangerous inorganic and organic compounds such as Cr(VI) andphenol into the environment. Both compounds are listed as priority pollutants by the US EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA) due to their toxicity and persistence. The great ability of indigenous microorganismsfor biotransformation of toxic compounds is of considerable interest for the emerging area of environmentalbioremediation. For this reason, we isolated a bacterial strain from tannery sediments, which was identified asAcinetobacter guillouiae SFC 500-1A able tosimultaneously remove high Cr(VI) and phenolconcentrations. The mechanisms involved in Cr(VI)removal as well as phenol biodegradation werepreviously studied (Ontañon et al., 2015).