Finnish Environment Institute, P.O. Box 140, FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland.
Indian J Microbiol. 2008 Jun;48(2):152-5. doi: 10.1007/s12088-008-0021-6. Epub 2008 Jun 12.
Biodegradation of xenobiotic compounds by microbes is exploited in the clean up of contaminated environments by bioremediation. Catabolic (or functional) genes encode for specific enzymes in catabolic pathways such as key enzymes in xenobiotic degradation pathways. By assessing the abundance or the expression of key genes in environmental samples one can get a potential measure of the degradation activity. One way of assessing the abundance and expression of specific catabolic genes is by analyzing the metagenomic DNA and RNA from environmental samples. Three major challenges in the detection and quantification of catabolic genes in bioremediation studies are 1) the accurate and sensitive quantification from environmental samples 2) the coverage of the enzymatic potential by the targeted genes 3) the validation of the correlation with actual observed degradation activities in field cases. New advances in realtime PCR, functional gene arrays and meta-transcriptomics have improved the applicability of catabolic gene assessment during bioremediation.
微生物对外源化合物的生物降解作用被用于生物修复来净化污染环境。异化（或功能）基因在异化途径中编码特定的酶，如外源化合物降解途径中的关键酶。通过评估环境样本中关键基因的丰度或表达，可以获得降解活性的潜在衡量标准。评估特定异化基因的丰度和表达的一种方法是分析环境样本的宏基因组 DNA 和 RNA。在生物修复研究中检测和定量异化基因的三个主要挑战是 1）从环境样本中进行准确和灵敏的定量 2）目标基因对酶潜能的覆盖 3）与野外实际观察到的降解活动的相关性的验证。实时 PCR、功能基因阵列和元转录组学的新进展提高了生物修复过程中异化基因评估的适用性。
