Anaerobic consortia and enzymes for biotransformation of aromatic compounds

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These are very exciting times in fundamental and applied environmental microbiology and biotechnology owing to recent advances in analytical tools and techniques to interrogate complex microbial ecosystems. These tools include quantitative DNA and RNA extraction and amplification tools, affordable large-scale DNA sequencing, and protein and proteomics analyses applicable to environmental samples. These techniques are enabling novel approaches to explore and understand the many ways microbial populations grow and interact in complex "difficult-to-study" ecosystems of global importance, such as microbial communities cycling nutrients in soils, in wastewater treatment systems, and in the human gut.******In particular, this research focuses on processes that occur in anaerobic environments that exist in swamps, sediments, the deep subsurface, hot springs, and inside the guts of most creatures. Such anaerobic microbial ecosystems are also key in engineered waste treatment systems like anaerobic digestors and constructed wetlands and in industrial or food fermentation and bioenergy processes. The decomposition of organic matter and the cycling of minerals in anaerobic environments rely on complex microbial communities that have defied traditional reductionist approaches.  ***The focus of this proposal is on the anaerobic biotransformation of benzene, because of its abundance on the planet. Indeed the benzene ring structure is found in common molecules including lignin, proteins, and plant metabolites, and makes up to 30% of the fossil carbon in crude oil. Benzene is also a valuable industrial chemical and a toxic groundwater contaminant.  In this project, we propose to use sensitive mass spectrometry to finally figure out how enzymes break the benzene ring in the absence of oxygen.  This has been a quest for many years, but the advent of new tools brings us closer to this goal than ever before.   Benzene and related compounds are some of our worst environmental offenders.  The major goal of this work is to unblock major degradation bottlenecks and to develop useful tools and knowledge to improve bioremediation and expand the arsenal of strategies to deal with contaminated sites.********