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Bioremediation: Current scenario and a necessity in immediate future

Ajinder Kaur Ahluwalia, Bhupinder Singh Sekhon

Bioremediation refers to the use of microorganisms to degrade, sequester, or remove environment contaminants and is increasingly drawing attention. It offers an alternative, specific, cost-effective, and environment friendly technique over other conventional methods of pollutant cleans up. Three strategies (microbial-, phyto-, and nanotechnology based remediation) biodegrade xenobiotics and various recalcitrant compounds into simple organic compounds, carbon dioxide, water, salts, and other harmless substances. Bioaugmentation and biostimulation of oil and heavy metal contaminated soil and ground water; genetically engineered microorganisms for treating oil-spills, and for sequestering of heavy metals; genetically engineered microorganisms and transgenic plants for the treatment of chlorinated pollutants, including chlorinated solvents, polychlorinated phenols, and chlorinated herbicides are included. Enhanced bioremediation rates to many folds have been achieved with phages driven microbial loop.With the new development in this field and focus on interdisciplinary research, bioremediation technology will go a long way in cleaning our polluted environment in near future. Research on improved microbial strains, and bioanalytical methods for measuring the level of contaminants should be strengthen.