Bioremediation of Recalcitrant Complex Carbohydrate Biopolymers by a Novel Marine Bacterium
The demand for increased agricultural and aquacultural production worldwide has brought with it increased food wastes, the disposal of which pose serious environmental problems. While these wastes are primarily complex carbohydrates that are not easily soluble, some microorganisms have evolved powerful enzymes to utilize them. Such enzymes offer prospects for developing innovative means for treating wastes and, in the process, converting them to potentially usable products. In this project, Ronald Weiner has been studying a newly discovered marine bacterial species (strain 2-40), isolated from the marsh grass Spartina, and using it to develop methods to bioremediate complex polysaccharide waste products. Strain 2-40 produces at least 12 enzyme systems that can degrade common, complex carbohydrates, among them, chitin (from crab shell), agar and alginic acid. Weiner's goal is to unravel the biochemical and cellular processes that enable strain 2-40 to so efficiently break down these compounds. To date, he has purified several of the enzymes, which will be scaled up to test for commercial applications. At the same time, plans are underway to test enzymes for the remediation of crab wastes at seafood processing operations.
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Ronald Weiner
Department of Microbiology
University of Maryland College Park
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