Metabolic Pathways of Particular Relevance to Environmental Biotechnology

 Metabolic Pathways of Particular Relevance to Environmental Biotechnology

Having established that the overall strategy of environmental biotechnology is to make use of the metabolic pathways in micro-organisms to break down or metabolise organic material. Metabolic pathways operating in the overall direction of synthesis are termed anabolic while those operating in the direction of breakdown or degradation are described as catabolic: the terms catabolism and anabolism being applied to describe the degradative or synthetic processes respectively.

 It has been mentioned already and it will become clear from the forthcoming discussion, that the eventual fate of the carbon skeletons of biological macromolecules is entry into the central metabolic pathways.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Land Spread - Sewage Treatment

  Land Spread The previusly discussed the inherent abilities of certain kinds of soil microbes to remediate a wide range of contaminants, either in an unmodified form, or benefiting from some form of external intervention like optimisation, enhancement or bioaugmentation. Unsurprisingly, some approaches to sewage treatment over the years have sought to make use of this large intrinsic capacity as an unengineered, low-cost response to the management of domestic wastewaters. Thus, treatment by land spread may be defined as the controlled application of sewage to the ground to bring about the required level of processing through the physico-chemical and biological mechanisms within the soil matrix. In most applications of this kind, green plants also play a significant role in the overall treatment process and their contribution to the wider scope of pollutant removal is discussed more fully in the next.  Although it was originally simply intended as a disposal option, in a classic case o
Read more

Cellulose Ion-Exchange Media

  Cellulose Ion-Exchange Media For effluents requiring a highly selective removal of high molecular weight proteins, cellulose ion-exchange media provide an example of treatment involving the use of isolated biologically derived materials. The ion exchange medium is replenished with brine as required, and the proteins collected are removed in the resulting saline solution, for subsequent coagulation and drying. This enables a valuable material to be recovered, typically for use as an animal foodstuff, while reducing the wastewater BOD by 90% or more.
Read more

Practical Toxicity Issues

Image
  Practical Toxicity Issues The general factors which influence toxicity have already been set out earlier in this discussion, but before moving on to consider wider practical issues it is helpful to mention briefly the manner in which the toxic action of pollutants arises. There are two main mechanisms, often labelled ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’. In the former, the effect arises by the contaminant combining with cellular constituents or enzymes and thus preventing their proper function. In the latter, the damage is done by secondary action resulting from their presence, typified by histamine reactions in allergic responses.  The significance of natural cycles to the practical applications of environmental biotechnology is a point that has already been made. In many respects the functional toxicity of a pollution event is often no more than the obverse aspect of this same coin, in that it is frequently an overburdening of existing innate systems which constitutes the problem. Thus the diff
Read more