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Engineered endophytic bacteria improve phytoremediation of water-soluble, volatile, organic pollutants

Nature Biotechnology volume 22, pages 583–588 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Phytoremediation of highly water soluble and volatile organic xenobiotics is often inefficient because plants do not completely degrade these compounds through their rhizospheres. This results in phytotoxicity and/or volatilization of chemicals through the leaves, which can cause additional environmental problems. We demonstrate that endophytic bacteria equipped with the appropriate degradation pathway improve the in planta degradation of toluene. We introduced the pTOM toluene-degradation plasmid of Burkholderia cepacia G4 into B. cepacia L.S.2.4, a natural endophyte of yellow lupine. After surface-sterilized lupine seeds were successfully inoculated with the recombinant strain, the engineered endophytic bacteria strongly degraded toluene, resulting in a marked decrease in its phytotoxicity, and a 50–70% reduction of its evapotranspiration through the leaves. This strategy promises to improve the efficiency of phytoremediating volatile organic contaminants.

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Figure 1: Schematic representation of the experimental setup for measuring toluene evapotranspiration.
Figure 2: Difference in biomass (g) between inoculated and control yellow lupine plants, before and after adding toluene.
Figure 3: Total amount of toluene (μg) detected in Tenax traps connected with the upper compartment (containing the aerial part of L. luteus plant) determined by GC-MS.
Figure 4: Phytotoxic effect of toluene on yellow lupine grown in nonsterile sandy soil under the greenhouse conditions.
Figure 5: Biomass (g) of yellow lupine plants, grown in nonsterile sandy soil under the greenhouse conditions, after 14-d exposure to the different toluene concentrations.

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Acknowledgements

The European Commission under the Fifth Framework Program, Quality of Life supported this work by grant no. QLK3-2000-00164 entitled “Endegrade.” The work was also supported by Ford Motor Company (Genk Plant and the Environmental Quality Office Europe), which also provides experimental sites. We thank K. Germaine and E. Keogh for providing us with tomA specific primers, F. Tibaldi for statistic analysis of our data, D. Van Genechten for assisting in the conjugation experiments and J. Czech and R. Carleer for help with toluene analysis. Special thanks are due to M. Mergeay who interested us in the potential of endophytic bacteria. D.v.d.L. and S.T. are presently being supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development funds at the Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract with the US Department of Energy. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Licy Oeyen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Biology, Limburgs Universitair Centrum (LUC), Universitaire Campus building D, Diepenbeek, B-3590, Belgium

    Tanja Barac, Licy Oeyen, Jan V Colpaert & Jaco Vangronsveld

  2. Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Environmental Technology Expertise Center, Boeretang 200, Mol, B-2400, Belgium

    Safiyh Taghavi, Brigitte Borremans, Ann Provoost & Daniel van der Lelie

  3. Biology Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Building 463, Upton, 11973-5000, New York, USA

    Safiyh Taghavi & Daniel van der Lelie

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  1. Tanja Barac
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Correspondence to Daniel van der Lelie.

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Barac, T., Taghavi, S., Borremans, B. et al. Engineered endophytic bacteria improve phytoremediation of water-soluble, volatile, organic pollutants. Nat Biotechnol 22, 583–588 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt960

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