Cultural Factors Affecting Heavy Metals Removal by Actinobacteria

VILLEGAS, LILIANA BEATRIZ; RODRÍGUEZ, ANALIA; PEREIRA, CLAUDIA ELIZABETH; ABATE, CARLOS MAURICIO

Actinobacteria: Application in Bioremediation and Production of Industrial Enzymes

SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

Lugar: ENFIELD, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03748, USA; Año: 2013; p. 26 - 43

Recently, concern about heavy metal as environmental pollutants, have been escalating due to its build up to toxic levels in the environment as a result of various industrial and agricultural activities. Some heavy metals play an important role as trace elements in biochemical reactions but their ions are toxic at higher concentrations, producing public health problems. Traditional technologies for the heavy metals removal are expensive and present several disadvantages. New techniques are required for reducing the heavy metals concentration to environmentally acceptable levels at low costs. The use of biological remediation technologies such as bioremediation for clean up of heavy metal contaminated areas has received increasing interest from researchers worldwide. Organisms, in especial the soil microorganisms as actinomyces, are powerful remediators. The metal processing capacity of actinomyces can be used to concentrate, remove and recover metals from soil or aqueous streams and enhance the efficiency of wastewater treatment or bioremediation processes. These bacteria have a wide variety of answers or interactions with heavy metal and it is affected by numerous parameters as organic or inorganic composition of culture medium where the bacteria will grow, the pH influence on metal uptake by bacteria and the temperature effects because the heavy metal accumulation can be metabolism dependent. Therefore, in this chapter is presented the state of knowledge about heavy metal removal by actinomyces and the effect of culture medium composition on heavy metal clean up by them.