Biotransformation
Encyclopedia
Biotransformation is the chemical modification (or modifications) made by an organism on a chemical compound. If this modification ends in mineral compounds like CO2, NH4+, or H2O, the biotransformation is called mineralisation
.
Biotransformation means chemical alteration of chemicals such as (but not limited to) nutrient
s, amino acids, toxins, and drugs in the body. It is also needed to render nonpolar compounds
polar so that they are not reabsorbed in renal tubules and are excreted.
of a drug
or toxin
in a body is an example of a biotransformation. The body typically deals with a foreign compound by making it more water-soluble, to increase the rate of its excretion through the urine. There are many different process that can occur; the pathways of drug metabolism can be divided into:
Drugs can undergo one of four potential biotransformations: Active Drug to Inactive Metabolite, Active Drug to Active Metabolite, Inactive Drug to Active Metabolite, Active Drug to Toxic Metabolite (biotoxification).
s is a sustainable way to clean up contaminated environments. These bioremediation
and biotransformation methods harness the naturally occurring, microbial catabolic diversity to degrade, transform or accumulate a huge range of compounds including hydrocarbon
s (e.g. oil), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pharmaceutical substances, radionuclide
s and metals. Major methodological breakthroughs in recent years have enabled detailed genomic, metagenomic, proteomic, bioinformatic and other high-throughput analyses of environmentally relevant microorganism
s providing unprecedented insights into biotransformation and biodegradative
pathways and the ability of organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Biological processes play a major role in the removal of contaminants and pollutant
s from the environment
. Some microorganisms possess an astonishing catabolic versatility to degrade or transform such compounds. New methodological breakthroughs in sequencing
, genomics
, proteomics
, bioinformatics
and imaging are producing vast amounts of information. In the field of Environmental Microbiology
, genome
-based global studies open a new era providing unprecedented in silico views of metabolic and regulatory networks, as well as clues to the evolution of biochemical pathways relevant to biotransformation and to the molecular adaptation strategies to changing environmental conditions. Functional genomic and metagenomic approaches are increasing our understanding of the relative importance of different pathways and regulatory networks to carbon flux in particular environments and for particular compounds and they are accelerating the development of bioremediation
technologies and biotransformation processes.
Also there is other approach of biotransformation called enzymatic biotransformation.
oil is toxic for most life forms and episodic and chronic pollution
of the environment by oil causes major ecological perturbations. Marine environments are especially vulnerable, since oil spills of coastal regions and the open sea are poorly containable and mitigation is difficult. In addition to pollution through human activities, millions of tons of petroleum enter the marine environment every year from natural seepages. Despite its toxicity, a considerable fraction of petroleum oil entering marine systems is eliminated by the hydrocarbon-degrading activities of microbial communities, in particular by a remarkable recently discovered group of specialists, the so-called hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (HCB). Alcanivorax borkumensis, a paradigm of HCB and probably the most important global oil degrader, was the first to be subjected to a functional genomic analysis. This analysis has yielded important new insights into its capacity for (i) n-alkane degradation including metabolism, biosurfactant production and biofilm
formation, (ii) scavenging of nutrients and cofactors in the oligotrophic marine environment, as well as (iii) coping with various habitat-specific stresses. The understanding thereby gained constitutes a significant advance in efforts towards the design of new knowledge-based strategies for the mitigation of ecological damage caused by oil pollution of marine habitats. HCB also have potential biotechnological applications in the areas of bioplastic
s and biocatalysis
.
s on pilot and even on industrial scale. Novel catalysts can be obtained from metagenomic libraries and DNA sequence
based approaches. Our increasing capabilities in adapting the catalysts to specific reactions and process requirements by rational and random mutagenesis
broadens the scope for application in the fine chemical industry, but also in the field of biodegradation
. In many cases, these catalysts need to be exploited in whole cell bioconversion
s or in fermentation
s, calling for system-wide approaches to understanding strain physiology and metabolism and rational approaches to the engineering of whole cells as they are increasingly put forward in the area of systems biotechnology
and synthetic biology.
biotransformation is used to eliminate the drug from the body. some drugs can not be eliminated by the excretion for them biotransformation is required.
Mineralization (biology)
In biology, mineralization refers to the process where an organic substance is converted to an inorganic substance.This may also be a normal biological process which takes place during the life of an organism such as the formation of bone tissue or egg shells, largely with calcium.This term may...
.
Biotransformation means chemical alteration of chemicals such as (but not limited to) nutrient
Nutrient
A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy...
s, amino acids, toxins, and drugs in the body. It is also needed to render nonpolar compounds
Chemical polarity
In chemistry, polarity refers to a separation of electric charge leading to a molecule or its chemical groups having an electric dipole or multipole moment. Polar molecules interact through dipole–dipole intermolecular forces and hydrogen bonds. Molecular polarity is dependent on the difference in...
polar so that they are not reabsorbed in renal tubules and are excreted.
Drug metabolism
The metabolismMetabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
of a drug
Drug
A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage.In pharmacology, a...
or toxin
Toxin
A toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms; man-made substances created by artificial processes are thus excluded...
in a body is an example of a biotransformation. The body typically deals with a foreign compound by making it more water-soluble, to increase the rate of its excretion through the urine. There are many different process that can occur; the pathways of drug metabolism can be divided into:
- phase І
- phase II
Drugs can undergo one of four potential biotransformations: Active Drug to Inactive Metabolite, Active Drug to Active Metabolite, Inactive Drug to Active Metabolite, Active Drug to Toxic Metabolite (biotoxification).
Phase I reaction
- Includes oxidative, reductive, and hydrolytic reactions.
- In these type of reactions, a polar group is either introduced or unmasked, so the drug moleculeSmall moleculeIn the fields of pharmacology and biochemistry, a small molecule is a low molecular weight organic compound which is by definition not a polymer...
becomes more water-soluble and can be excreted. - Reactions are non-synthetic in nature and in general produce a more water-soluble and more-active metabolites.
- The majority of metabolites are generated by a common hydroxylating enzyme system known as Cytochrome P450.
Phase II reaction
- These reactions involve covalent attachment of small polar endogenous molecule such as glucuronic acid, sulfate, or glycine to form water-soluble compounds.
- This is also known as a conjugation reaction.
- The final compounds have a larger molecular weight.
Microbial biotransformation
Biotransformation of various pollutantPollutant
A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil, and is the cause of pollution.Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, its concentration and its persistence. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the...
s is a sustainable way to clean up contaminated environments. These bioremediation
Bioremediation
Bioremediation is the use of microorganism metabolism to remove pollutants. Technologies can be generally classified as in situ or ex situ. In situ bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, while ex situ involves the removal of the contaminated material to be treated...
and biotransformation methods harness the naturally occurring, microbial catabolic diversity to degrade, transform or accumulate a huge range of compounds including hydrocarbon
Hydrocarbon
In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....
s (e.g. oil), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pharmaceutical substances, radionuclide
Radionuclide
A radionuclide is an atom with an unstable nucleus, which is a nucleus characterized by excess energy available to be imparted either to a newly created radiation particle within the nucleus or to an atomic electron. The radionuclide, in this process, undergoes radioactive decay, and emits gamma...
s and metals. Major methodological breakthroughs in recent years have enabled detailed genomic, metagenomic, proteomic, bioinformatic and other high-throughput analyses of environmentally relevant microorganism
Microorganism
A microorganism or microbe is a microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters, or no cell at all...
s providing unprecedented insights into biotransformation and biodegradative
Microbial biodegradation
Interest in the microbial biodegradation of pollutants has intensified in recent years as humanity strives to find sustainable ways to clean up contaminated environments...
pathways and the ability of organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Biological processes play a major role in the removal of contaminants and pollutant
Pollutant
A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil, and is the cause of pollution.Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, its concentration and its persistence. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the...
s from the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
. Some microorganisms possess an astonishing catabolic versatility to degrade or transform such compounds. New methodological breakthroughs in sequencing
Sequencing
In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure of an unbranched biopolymer...
, genomics
Genomics
Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...
, proteomics
Proteomics
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, as they are the main components of the physiological metabolic pathways of cells. The term "proteomics" was first coined in 1997 to make an analogy with...
, bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
and imaging are producing vast amounts of information. In the field of Environmental Microbiology
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...
, genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
-based global studies open a new era providing unprecedented in silico views of metabolic and regulatory networks, as well as clues to the evolution of biochemical pathways relevant to biotransformation and to the molecular adaptation strategies to changing environmental conditions. Functional genomic and metagenomic approaches are increasing our understanding of the relative importance of different pathways and regulatory networks to carbon flux in particular environments and for particular compounds and they are accelerating the development of bioremediation
Bioremediation
Bioremediation is the use of microorganism metabolism to remove pollutants. Technologies can be generally classified as in situ or ex situ. In situ bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, while ex situ involves the removal of the contaminated material to be treated...
technologies and biotransformation processes.
Also there is other approach of biotransformation called enzymatic biotransformation.
Oil Biodegradation
PetroleumPetroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
oil is toxic for most life forms and episodic and chronic pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
of the environment by oil causes major ecological perturbations. Marine environments are especially vulnerable, since oil spills of coastal regions and the open sea are poorly containable and mitigation is difficult. In addition to pollution through human activities, millions of tons of petroleum enter the marine environment every year from natural seepages. Despite its toxicity, a considerable fraction of petroleum oil entering marine systems is eliminated by the hydrocarbon-degrading activities of microbial communities, in particular by a remarkable recently discovered group of specialists, the so-called hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (HCB). Alcanivorax borkumensis, a paradigm of HCB and probably the most important global oil degrader, was the first to be subjected to a functional genomic analysis. This analysis has yielded important new insights into its capacity for (i) n-alkane degradation including metabolism, biosurfactant production and biofilm
Biofilm
A biofilm is an aggregate of microorganisms in which cells adhere to each other on a surface. These adherent cells are frequently embedded within a self-produced matrix of extracellular polymeric substance...
formation, (ii) scavenging of nutrients and cofactors in the oligotrophic marine environment, as well as (iii) coping with various habitat-specific stresses. The understanding thereby gained constitutes a significant advance in efforts towards the design of new knowledge-based strategies for the mitigation of ecological damage caused by oil pollution of marine habitats. HCB also have potential biotechnological applications in the areas of bioplastic
Bioplastic
Bioplastics are a form of plastics derived from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, pea starch, or microbiota, rather than fossil-fuel plastics which are derived from petroleum...
s and biocatalysis
Biocatalysis
Biocatalysis is the use of natural catalysts, such as protein enzymes, to perform chemical transformations on organic compounds. Both enzymes that have been more or less isolated and enzymes still residing inside living cells are employed for this task....
.
Metabolic Engineering and Biocatalytic Applications
The study of the fate of persistent organic chemicals in the environment has revealed a large reservoir of enzymatic reactions with a large potential in preparative organic synthesis, which has already been exploited for a number of oxygenaseOxygenase
An oxygenase is any enzyme that oxidizes a substrate by transferring the oxygen from molecular oxygen O2 to it. The oxygenases form a class of oxidoreductases; their EC number is EC 1.13 or EC 1.14....
s on pilot and even on industrial scale. Novel catalysts can be obtained from metagenomic libraries and DNA sequence
DNA sequence
The sequence or primary structure of a nucleic acid is the composition of atoms that make up the nucleic acid and the chemical bonds that bond those atoms. Because nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this specification is equivalent to specifying the sequence of...
based approaches. Our increasing capabilities in adapting the catalysts to specific reactions and process requirements by rational and random mutagenesis
Mutagenesis
Mutagenesis is a process by which the genetic information of an organism is changed in a stable manner, resulting in a mutation. It may occur spontaneously in nature, or as a result of exposure to mutagens. It can also be achieved experimentally using laboratory procedures...
broadens the scope for application in the fine chemical industry, but also in the field of biodegradation
Biodegradation
Biodegradation or biotic degradation or biotic decomposition is the chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means...
. In many cases, these catalysts need to be exploited in whole cell bioconversion
Bioconversion
The term Bioconversion, also known as biotransformation refers to the use of live organisms often microorganisms to carry out a chemical reaction that is more costly or not feasible nonbiologically. These organisms converts a substance to a chemically modified form. An example is the industrial...
s or in fermentation
Fermentation (biochemistry)
Fermentation is the process of extracting energy from the oxidation of organic compounds, such as carbohydrates, using an endogenous electron acceptor, which is usually an organic compound. In contrast, respiration is where electrons are donated to an exogenous electron acceptor, such as oxygen,...
s, calling for system-wide approaches to understanding strain physiology and metabolism and rational approaches to the engineering of whole cells as they are increasingly put forward in the area of systems biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
and synthetic biology.
See also
- Microbial biodegradationMicrobial biodegradationInterest in the microbial biodegradation of pollutants has intensified in recent years as humanity strives to find sustainable ways to clean up contaminated environments...
- Xenobiotic metabolismXenobiotic metabolismXenobiotic metabolism is the set of metabolic pathways that modify the chemical structure of xenobiotics, which are compounds foreign to an organism's normal biochemistry, such as drugs and poisons...
- BiodegradationBiodegradationBiodegradation or biotic degradation or biotic decomposition is the chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means...
- BioremediationBioremediationBioremediation is the use of microorganism metabolism to remove pollutants. Technologies can be generally classified as in situ or ex situ. In situ bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, while ex situ involves the removal of the contaminated material to be treated...
- Mineralisation
biotransformation is used to eliminate the drug from the body. some drugs can not be eliminated by the excretion for them biotransformation is required.