Discuss with examples how the trophic diversity of bacteria can

help solve some environmental problems

Heterotrophics Bacteria Optimizing Carbon !itrogen "C!# $atios for a Healthy %&uaculture 'nvironment Heterotrophic is the term given to describe bacteria that derive nutrition from sources that are primarily organic. Heterotrophic bacteria include both probiotic and pathogenic bacteria types. Probiotic and pathogenic bacteria both naturally occur in agriculture environments. As their primary source of nutrition is organic compounds, heterotrophic bacteria are exceptionally useful in breaking down organic wastes produced by fish. Heterotrophic bacteria rely on two nutrients to thrive, nitrogen and carbon. As anyone in the aquaculture industry knows, nitrogen is in abundance in a pond environment. Fish wastes are extremely rich in nitrogen, which, when in excess can lead to dangerous water chemistry problems. ith !itrogen in abundance, growth of heterotrophic bacteria is limited by the amount of carbon that is available to consume. "he goal of optimi#ing carbon$ !itrogen ratios %&! 'atio( is to increase the level of carbon to an appropriate ratio to allow heterotrophic bacteria to thrive. )f this is achieved then the bacteria will be able to break down the !itrogen* rich fish wastes and reduce the ammonia content in the water. Ammonia released directly by the fish by diffusion from the blood across the gill membranes. +xcreted urea or uric acid is also converted to ammonia through a process called minerali#ation. ,olid organic, nitrogenous, waste material is also converted to ammonia through minerali#ation. ,ources of this waste material are from fecal material, the decay of plant and animal tissues, and from the decay of excess food. -inerali#ation is accomplished by any of a number of species of heterotrophic bacteria. ,pecies from the genus .acillus are the most common. Ammonia is the primary compound produced by this process. ,ome species of heterotrophic bacteria can oxidi#e or reduce nitrogenous compounds directly to nitrites %!/0(, nitrate %!/1(, or other forms of nitrogen %as !/ or !0(. )n the absence of an organic nitrogen source, many heterotrophy can utili#e ammonia instead. "his is much more likely to happen in the laboratory under ideal conditions than in actual practice. )n the aquarium, as in nature, an organic, nitrogen rich, food

source is constantly being produced and is readily available for these bacteria to utili#e. Heterotrophic bacteria have little or no need to resort to utili#ing ammonia as their source of nitrogen. "his ability of heterotrophic bacteria to utili#e ammonia has led to the erroneous belief that they are as effective as true nitrifying bacteria in establishing the nitrogen cycle. "hese bacteria, however, generally cannot utili#e nitrites. +xperimental data has shown that up to one million times more of these heterotrophic 2nitrifers3 are required to perform a comparable level of ammonia conversion that is attained by true autotrophic nitrifies. hen using heterotrophic 2nitrifiers3, the nitrogen cycle in the aquarium basically follows the same course as when no bacteria are added and the system cycles naturally.

%utotrophics Bacteria * Help (orests )row

.acteria living in mosses on tree branches twice as effective at 4fixing4 nitrogen as those on the ground. "he cyanobacteria take nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to plants*a process called 5nitrogen fixation5 that very few organisms can do. "he growth and development of many forests is thought to be limited by the availability of nitrogen. &yanobacteria in mosses on the ground were recently shown to supply nitrogen to the .oreal forest, but until now cyanobacteria have not been studied in coastal forests or in canopies %tree*tops(. .y collecting mosses on the forest floor and then at 67 and 18 metres up into the forest canopy, the cyanobacteria are more abundant in mosses high above the ground, and that they 5fix5 twice as much nitrogen as those associated with mosses on the forest floor. -oss is the crucial element. "he amount of nitrogen coming from the canopy depends on trees having mosses. -any trees don4t start to accumulate mosses until they4re more than 688 years old. ,o it4s really the density of very large old trees that are draped in moss that is important at a forest stand level.

Direct *olar (uels

&yanobacteria are bacteria that produce and secrete fatty acids, which can then be used for bio fuel feed stocks. ,cientists are working to harness this process using only the essential elements required to generate the fatty acids for harvest. "hese elements are water, sunlight, and &/0. "his innovative path to biofuel development shortens the process and is predicted to yield upwards of 68 times the usable energy of conventional biofuels. "his cyanobacteria is being modified genetically so that it can produce optimi#ed yields of &*69 and &*6: lipids %i.e., fats(. "hese lipids will be used as a feed stock to a process that will convert the lipid feedstock into a biodiesel fuel. "he genome of this bacteria is completely sequenced, and it is much better suited to metabolic engineering than eukaryotic algae . "he cyanobacterium is photosynthetic and fixes &/0 into a feed of carbon molecules, and the ,hewanella baterium converts that feedstock into longer hydrogen molecules, usable as a second feedstock, which can then be refined into a commercially viable bio fuel. "he breakthrough that makes the hydrocarbon* generating process possible is a special latex developed by .io&ee, )nc. "his latex lines the bioreactors where the bacteria can live stably, free to produce hydrocarbons. Pilot industrial production trials have not been announced to date. hat is exciting about the whole process is that it requires only sunlight and &/0 to fuel it. "his is an elegant and innovative way to generate renewable hydrocarbon bio fuels in a way that bypasses the hundreds of millions of years needed for fossil fuels to form, using only the sun and air to fuel the process. * +a,e Bio -lastics

.utanediol %.;/( is an intermediate chemical compound used to make a wide array of useful products. "he range of products includes car bumpers, spandex, elastic fibers, and polyurethanes, to name a few. orld production is about 6 million metric tons each year for 6,<*butanediol %/H groups on the first and fourth position of the butane carbon chain(. ,cale up of this bio*plastic process looks promising, because +. coli is already being successfully grown commercially in large tanks for growing food stuffs. "he appeal of this process goes well beyond its novelty. &onventional industrial processes for making 6,<*butanediol are very energy intense

and use butane gas, phosphoric acid, acetylene, and formaldehyde, as well as esters and anhydrides of maleic and succinic acids in an alternative process.

Oil *pill Clean .p

A certain strain of bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa called !=1 has been discovered, which can help clean up oil spills.. "he !=1 strain of this bacteria has an extraordinary ability to produce a group of biosurfactants called rhamnolipids. "hese rhamnolipids have the capacity to break down oil and degrade toxic PHAs %polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons( in the oil. ,trains of the !=1 bacteria have been developed to produce high yields of 60 grams per liter. "his opens the way for rapid scale*up in the near future. &onventional oil spill clean*up chemicals are often found to be toxic. 'hamnolipids are both biodegradable and non*toxic. .acteria can turn a number of toxic substances into non*toxic ones> this process is referred to as ?biodegradation.@ .iodegradation is an area of active research in marine ecology. "here are several types of bacteria that live in the ocean and eat oil petroleum hydrocarbons from oil tanker spills. ,ome research has found that adding other nutrients to oil spills can speed up the growth of bacteria at the spill and therefore speed the ?removal@ of the oil by the bacteria. /ther types of bacteria can biodegrade cyanide. &yanide is a by product of plastics manufacture, aluminum processing, and is contained in cigarette smoke. )nhaling cyanide gas can cause poisoning including long*term heart and brain damage, and death. &ertain soil bacteria can turn cyanide into harmless carbon dioxide or ammonia. .ioremediation involves using biological organisms like bacteria to solve an environmental problem such as contaminated soil or groundwater. .acteria and other microbes are constantly breaking down organic matter. hen their habitat becomes polluted, some microbes die while others that are capable of eating the pollutant may survive. .ioremediation works by giving these microbes nutrients, oxygen, and any other conditions that would encourage their rapid growth.&leaning oil spills with marine bacteria is one type of bioremediation. .ioremediation does not work for all types of pollution. For example, sites where

chemicals are found at too high of a concentration will kill most microbes. However, bioremediation does provide a technique for cleaning up pollution by enhancing the same processes that occur in nature. .ioremediation can be safer and less expensive than other methods such as burning or burying contaminated.

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-olles, -anuel &. 0868 +cology, &oncepts And Applications, )nternational +dition, %7th +dition(, -cAraw*Hill &lifton, &. +. Introduction to Bacterial Physiology. !ew =ork, 6BBC. Aunsalus, ). &, and '. D. ,tanier. The Bacteria, vols. 6E7. !ew =ork, 0886. ,tanier, '. D., -. ;oudoroff, and +. A. Adelberg. The Microbial World, 0nd ed. !ew =ork, 0881