Metabolomics and Crucial Enzymes in Microbial Degradation of Contaminants
Rafał Szewczyk and Konrad Kowalski
from: Microbial Biodegradation: From Omics to Function and Application (Edited by: Jerzy Długoński). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2016) Pages: 43-66.
Abstract
Metabolic pathways in living organisms are series of chemical reactions and typically consist of the enzymatic activities of intra- or extracellular enzymes. This chapter focuses on the metabolomic workflow characterization, which may be briefly characterised as the initial discovery, profiling, and final quantitation of the compound or a class of compounds of interest. This approach incorporates different instrumentation techniques and bioinformatics tools described in the chapter. The metabolomics of biodegradation processes is presented here as a direct result of enzymatic activity of the microbes, plants, and higher organisms towards xenobiotics, and includes examples of the typical degradation pathways catalysed by enzymes involved in certain steps of toxic substance removal. In the last section, the examples of targeted and untargeted biodegradation process characterisations at the cellular metabolism level are described read more ...
