Bioremediation of Heavy Metals from Soil and Aquatic Environment: An Overview of Principles and Criteria of Fundamental Processes

By R. Dixit, Wasiullah, Deepti Malaviya, K. Pandiyan, U. Singh, A. Sahu, Renu Shukla, Bhanu Pratap Singh, J. Rai, Pawan Sharma and 2 more. 2015

1,131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Heavy metals are natural constituents of the environment, but indiscriminate use for human purposes has altered their geochemical cycles and biochemical balance. This results in excess release of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc etc. into natural resources like the soil and aquatic environments. Prolonged exposure and higher accumulation of such heavy metals can have deleterious health effects on human life and aquatic biota. The role of microorganisms and plants in biotransformation of heavy metals into nontoxic forms is well-documented, and understanding the molecular mechanism of metal accumulation has numerous biotechnological implications for bioremediation of metal-contaminated sites. In view of this, the present review investigates the abilities of microorganisms and plants in terms of tolerance and degradation of heavy metals. Also, advances in bioremediation technologies and strategies to explore these immense and valuable biological resources for bioremediation are discussed. An assessment of the current status of technology deployment and suggestions for future bioremediation research has also been included. Finally, there is a discussion of the genetic and molecular basis of metal tolerance in microbes, with special reference to the genomics of heavy metal accumulator plants and the identification of functional genes involved in tolerance and detoxification.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b4441c4d271931c2bd52ade1adf0af8ee685399c

How researchers see this paper

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In Environmental Engineering

1. Marc A. Rosen
2. Ravinder Kumar

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. O. Ojuederie
2. O. Babalola

In Pollution

1. R. Prasad
2. Marc A. Rosen
3. O. Ojuederie
4. O. Babalola

Citations in the corpus

• Heavy metal remediation and resistance mechanism of Aeromonas, Bacillus, and Pseudomonas: A review (2020, background): “Heavy metals are adsorbed at binding sites of the microbial cell wall without any involvement of energy (Dixit et al., 2015).”
• Engineering plants for heavy metal stress tolerance (2018, positive): “Emerging fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering are considered as most important tools for identification and better understanding of several key steps at the molecular level to improve plant tolerance particularly HM toxicity (Dixit et al. 2015; Mosa et al. 2016).”
• Nanotechnology in Sustainable Agriculture: Recent Developments, Challenges, and Perspectives (2017, background): “It is an interesting phenomena in considering the nano–nano interaction to remove the toxic component of the agricultural soil and make it sustainable (Ion et al., 2010; Dixit et al., 2015).”
• Recent progress in biohydrometallurgy and microbial characterisation (2018, background): “These processes have been proposed for the treatment of mine tailings, acid mine drainage sites, or for the recovery of metals from anaerobic sludges (e.g. Akcil et al., 2015; Diaz et al., 2015; Dixit et al., 2015; Fonti et al., 2016).”
• Ten Years of Sustainability (2009 to 2018): A Bibliometric Overview (2018, background): “10 Bioremediation of heavy metals from soil and aquatic environment: an overview of principles and criteria of fundamental processes [22] Dixit, R.”
• Bioremediation of heavy metals in food industry: Application of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (2019, background): “cerevisiae is pH 5, whereas for U, it is pH 4–5 [45,46,47].”