DEGRADATION OF PESTICIDES BY MICROORGANISMS AND THE POTENTIAL FOR GENETIC MANIPULATION

Biodegradation offers considerable promise as a strategy for detoxifying pesticide wastes. However, compared with the list of widely used pesticides there are few well-characterized microbial strains that transform pesticides into less toxic or more labile products at environmentally useful rates. Fortunately, the technology needed to isolate and characterize such strains has improved enormously in the past 5 years. In addition, recent experimental advances have made practical the modification of potentially useful biodegradation genes so that they may be optimally expressed in a variety of micro-organisms. This article reviews recent studies that have focused on actual biodegradation of pesticide wastes or have sought to characterize the microbial proteins and genes that are responsible for these enzymatic activities.