Institute of Polar Sciences, Italian National Research Council, 98122 Messina, Italy.
Centre for Environmental Biotechnology, School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, LL57 2UW Bangor, United Kingdom.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2022 Feb;73:337-345. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2021.09.015. Epub 2021 Nov 9.
According to current estimates, the annual volume of crude oil entering the ocean due to both anthropogenic activities and naturally occurring seepages reaches approximately 8.3 million metric tons. Huge discharges from accidents have caused large-scale environmental disasters with extensive damage to the marine ecosystem. The natural clean-up of petroleum spills in marine environments is carried out primarily by naturally occurring obligate hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (OHCB). The natural hosts of OHCB include a range of marine primary producers, unicellular photosynthetic eukaryotes and cyanobacteria, which have been documented as both, suppliers of hydrocarbon-like compounds that fuel the 'cryptic' hydrocarbon cycle and as a source of isolation of new OHCB. A very new body of evidence suggests that OHCB are not only the active early stage colonizers of plastics and hence the important component of the ocean's 'plastisphere' but also encode an array of enzymes experimentally proven to act on petrochemical and bio-based polymers.
据目前估计，由于人为活动和自然渗漏，每年进入海洋的原油量约为 830 万吨。事故造成的大量排放导致了大规模的环境灾难，对海洋生态系统造成了广泛的破坏。海洋环境中石油泄漏的自然清理主要是由自然存在的专性烃降解细菌（OHCB）进行的。OHCB 的自然宿主包括一系列海洋初级生产者、单细胞光合真核生物和蓝细菌，它们既是为“隐匿”烃循环提供类似烃化合物燃料的供应者，也是新的 OHCB 分离的来源，这一事实已被记录在案。大量新的证据表明，OHCB 不仅是塑料的早期活跃定植者，因此是海洋“塑料圈”的重要组成部分，而且还编码了一系列经实验证明可作用于石化和生物基聚合物的酶。
