BIOL241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Stereospecificity, Cyclohexanol, Benzoyl Group
Document Summary
Biodegradation, bioremediation, biocatalysis: biodegradation what organisms may do as a part of their metabolism, bioremediation when we exploit some biodegradation activity for clean-up purposes, biocatalysis when we exploit some microbial activity for our (industrial) use. Terminology: biodegradation is the use of microorganisms to remove or detoxify toxic or unwanted chemicals in an environment, bioremediation can be defined as the biologically catalyzed reduction in complexity of chemicals. Often the product is a simpler compound, sometimes it is more complex (ex. Factors influencing biodegradability, rate of biodegradation include: ph, temperature, organic matter content, presence/absence of required microbial consortium, bioavailability of target compound. Compound degradability may depend on: element composition, structure of basic repeating units (in a polymer, degree of branching in the molecule, arrangement and types of substituents linkage between units. Relative biodegradability of glucose polymers: starch, glycogen. 1 4 linkages easy to degrade: cellulose. Not readily degraded: 1,2-d (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) a herbicide.
